Murders Around Mississippi

EL DORADO, Ark. (AP) — The search was on for three missing young men in Mississippi during the August of 1964. FBI Special Agent Floyd Thomas was "right in the middle of it" on the search for the three individuals whose car had been torched some time before.

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Labels: civil rights, cold cases, Haley Barbour, Mississippi, Mississippi burning, murders in Mississippi

Whenever I speak about Emmett Till and other Mississippi murders, I get interesting questions from audience members. Here are several ...

Q. Is the Emmett Till story still important? Do people still care?

A. Emmett Till's murder took place over 54 years ago, back in 1955, and yet we are just beginning to learn the details of the crime. Till was a young man known only by his family and friends, but the truth of his lynching remains an important key to understanding American history. Further, the truth about young Till's murder and the truth about the murders of so many others — including President John F. Kennedy, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy — is crucial to maintaining our democracy, because in a free government ... truth matters.

In each of these murders, there have been numerous threats to the uncovering and exposure of the truth. These threats have often come from within our own government, through such programs as COINTELPRO, a secretive series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), officially from1956 to 1971.

While the FBI's COINTELPRO was aimed at "investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations" around the entire country, Mississippi had its own such secret spy agency, the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. This Commission spied and disrupted, with the help of the Ku Klux Klan, those people who aided in black voter registration and racial integration.

The Sovereignty Commission was formed only one year after Emmett Till's death, the same year as COINTELPRO, because of the pressure the state was receiving from the federal government. Former FBI and military intelligence agents were hired by Mississippi and used as Commission investigators. Ironically, the very federal government that was applying pressure on Mississippi to change, was also using the FBI and COINTELPRO to disrupt many people and organizations trying to bring positive change to the state, often tagging these people as Communists or simply dangerous.

Thanks to people who care about historical truth, their research on Emmett Till, COINTELPRO and the assassinations of our country's peace-seeking leaders continues to bring out new evidence. And as this truth becomes apparent, it serves to keep us free.

Yes, Emmett Till's story still matters. And as the 83,000 "Emmett Till" entries listed on Google as of 11:34 p.m. September 26, 2009, attest, the Emmett Till story continues to hold an important place in history. The story of 14-year-old Emmett Till remains important and people still care. Thank God.

Q.What kind of a boy was Emmett Till?

“I would say that to me, Emmett was very ordinary. But as I look at today’s youth, I realize that Emmett was very extraordinary,” his mother once told historian Devery Anderson who interviewed Mrs. Till Mobley in 1996. She described her son as responsible and industrious, a youngster who helped her clean, cook and do laundry, recognizing the importance of his help as a single mother. Anderson’s site is at emmetttillmurder.com.

In her book, Emmett’s mother gives a further glimpse of her son, however. “Emmet was always so confident about his ability to talk his way through things that you could forget that he still had a problem talking. After he had recovered from polio as quickly as he had done, at such an early age, the doctors figured he could lick this problem [stuttering], too And we did everything we were supposed to do. The speech therapy classes had helped some, but the stutter was still apparent at eleven and then at twelve, in normal conversation, but especially when he got excited.” Later, she also terms her son as “meticulous” and “independent.”

Young Emmett had just finished the seventh grade at the all-black McCosh Elementary School on Chicago's South Side when he went to Mississippi. He was between five-foot- four and five-foot-five and weighed 160 pounds, was physically stocky and muscular. Various authors write he was self-assured despite a speech defect--a stutter that resulted from a bout with nonparalytic polio at the age of three. Emmett was a smart dresser with a reputation as a prankster and a risk taker.

Q. What happened to Emmett Till’s father?

Louis Till, drafted in World War II, was convicted of raping two women and killing a third. He was executed by the U.S. Army, which originally told Till's wife, Mamie, only that he had been killed due to "willful misconduct.

One Chicago woman, J. Marie Green, a military retiree who studied black history and is an independent civil rights researcher, remembers Till’s murder and has spent years investigating what happened to his father. She wrote this comment on my blog, www.whokilledemmetttill.com:

“Emmett Till’s murder is something one never forgets. I was born and raised in Chicago, and was about five years old when he was killed and remember when it happened and saw the Jet magazine photos, and I was scared to death, shocked really and questioned my mother who was from Greenwood, Mississippi, asking her why would two grown men would kill a child and what is a "wolf whistle", and are these men coming after us? “She assured me that these men where not coming to get us, explained what a "wolf whistle" was and meant in relations to that, and as a side bar note, told me that I ask too many questions. (smile). But every child in our area was afraid for a long time. Over the years I have never forgotten him, and have read just about everything I have come across about him every time his name is mentioned somewhere. Just recently his name came up again, with the incident at Burr Oak Cemetery. Somehow I feel his death is not resolved.

“…Mrs. Till’s husband's story is another whole story all by itself. Pvt. Louis Till was part of the 177th Port Company, 397th Battalion — an all-"negro" battalion — which left from a NY port and arrived in France during 1944. He was hanged by execution by the U.S. Army on July 2, 1945. by orders of General Eisenhower. Allegedly for the murder of Anna Zanchi, and the rape of Benni Lucretzia and Frieda Muri who lived in Civitavecchia, Italy, these crime supposedly occurred on June 27, 1944, shortly after he arrived, mind you!

“According to records found at The American Battle Monuments Commission, Pvt. Louis Till is buried in an unmarked, prohibited, isolated area of Oise-Aisne Cemetery in Fere-en-Tardenois, France. The military marked his personnel file and the courts-martial records "secret," hushed it up, sent Mrs. Till a telegram, stating that her husband had died because of "misconduct," and she never knew what happened to him until her son's trial, when the Senators pulled some strings and contacted the military and some Staff Judge Advocate General, crossed out the word "secret" and released the information to them.

“Even after the trial of Emmett, she could never get any answers to what happened to her husband and why he was killed, this is clearly a military "railroad job," and has been hushed up all these years for a reason, but if you would check military history during this period you will see that a lot of black men were mysteriously hung for rape of French women. "They" took racism right on with them and convinced the French that "Negroes" had a problem, too.”

Q. Why do people sometimes refer to the University of Mississippi as Ole Miss?

The University got its nickname "Ole Miss" via a contest in 1897. That same year, the student yearbook was being published for the first time. As a way to find a name for the book, a contest was held to solicit suggestions from the student body. Elma Meek, a student at the time, submitted the winning entry of Ole Miss. This name was chosen not only for the yearbook, but also became the name by which the University is now known.

Ole Miss, as used by the University, is not a substitute for "Old Mississippi." Rather, this endearing term stands for the wife of the "Ole Massah" on a plantation (the man who enslaved and mistreated Africans).

U of Miss. publicity agents claim the name is thought of in an affectionate manner, today. To check this out, I walked around the campus one day and asked some of the black students what they thought about this nickname and its history. Most were well aware of the story and several said they were disgusted. “It’s just embarrassing,” one student said. “I wish the school would change it.”

Q. Who is your favorite Mississippi hero?

Reading The Fire Ever Burning by Constance Curry and Aaron Henry helped get me started on this journey. Henry was a true hero and someone I would have wanted to know.

Henry was a fierce champion of civil rights, a leader of the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP and a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives. He is still one of the most revered civil rights leaders in Mississippi, at least by many older civil rights advocates who know their state’s history.

Henry grew up near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and later earned a degree in political science at Xavier University in New Orleans. During World War II, he served as a staff sergeant with the U.S. Army in the Pacific. After the war, Henry attended pharmacy school, and eventually returned to Clarksdale to open a corner drug store where any important civil rights and government leaders met to unite Mississippi blacks in fighting white supremacy. Sadly, the pharmacy no longer stands in Clarksdale. His home was also demolished in a fire.

There were many personal tragedies in Henry’s life as well as successes. In 1961, Henry led a highly successful boycott of stores in the Clarksdale, Mississippi, area that refused to hire black workers and discriminated against black customers. He and six others were arrested for “conspiring to withhold trade.”

These charges were eventually reversed on appeal but another charge, of sexual harassment, against Henry, soon followed came soon after. While he was fighting this case, which he eventually won, his pharmacy was firebombed and his wife, Nicole, was fired from her job as a public school teacher. Several years later, Medgar Evers was assassinated in 1963 after taking Henry to the airport.

For Henry, there was no such thing as a small victory and because each victory usually led to an even greater success. "I think," Henry once said, "that every time a man stands for an ideal or speaks out against injustice, he sends out a tiny ripple of hope."

After the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the number of black voters grew rapidly and as African Americans began to be elected winning elections to various local, county and statewide offices. Henry was elected to serve in the State House of Representatives in 1982, a post he held until 1996 where he continued to fight against racial injustice.

Henry introduced legislation to remove the Confederate battle flag from the state flag and continued to call for the reopening of the murder case for his old friend, Medgar Evers. Aaron Henry suffered a stroke in 1996, and died on May 19, 1997 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, just two months and five days after the murder of his friend, Cleve McDowell.

Q. Can I see a movie about Emmett Till

Yes, thanks to Keith Beauchamp, a young man who saw the photograph of Emmett Till's brutally beaten face that ran on the cover Jet magazine and became a civil rights activist in 2004. Beauchamp directed The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till that is available on DVD. Till's murder has yet to be solved and Beauchamp said he is committing his energy to solving this and other civil rights cold cases. We owe him our extreme thanks and appreciation for his tenacity, perseverance and dedication to the cause of civil rights.

Q. What’s happening these days in Mississippi?

Many activities are going on — some good and some disgusting. Friends of Justice is a nonprofit organization working to uphold due process for all Americans with the goal of building a public consensus behind equal access to justice and respect for human dignity in our criminal justice system, according to Executive Director, Dr. Alan Bean.

Friends of Justice formed in response to the infamous Tulia drug sting of 1999 in which 47 people, 39 of them African Americans, were rounded up based on the false testimony of an undercover agent, he explains.

The unique group emerged as a coalition of defendant’s defendants' families and other concerned citizens who believed the defendants were being prosecuted on faulty evidence. "Because of the work of Friends of Justice, the Texas Legislature passed the Tulia Corroboration Bill, which has led to the exoneration of dozens of innocent people by raising the evidentiary standards for undercover testimony."

Learning from their experience in Tulia, Friends of Justice started organizing across Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi.

"We launch narrative-based campaigns around unfolding cases where due process has broken down, and empower affected communities to hold public officials accountable for equal justice. For more on our work, check their blog at http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/blog/

A wrongful conviction in a murder trial recently actually brought FOJ to Mississippi. In July 1996, four people were killed execution style at a Montgomery County furniture store: owner Bertha Tardy, bookkeeper Carmen Rigby, and two hired men, Bobo Stewart and Robert Golden. Golden was black, the other three victims were white. Six months later, Curtis Flowers, a young black Winona resident - who had worked three days for Bertha Tardy - was arrested and charged with the brutal murder of four innocent people.

Thirteen years, $300,000 and five trials later, Mr. Flowers remains behind bars and during which the state has been unable to obtain a final conviction.
Dr. Bean’s group believes that the state’s theory of the murder crime accused of a Winona company's former worker, by Flowers, "... doesn’t fit the actual evidence, and the state manufactured phony evidence by manipulating, badgering and bribing witnesses." Details of the Curtis Flowers case are shared at the FOJ website in a story titled, "A brief primer in wrongful conviction. You can find more at www.friendsofjustice.com.

A similar but unrelated ongoing case occurred three years earlier on December 24, 1993 when Scott County Sheriff's Department arrested sisters Gladys and Jamie Scott for an armed robbery they in which they vehemently deny participation in. In 1994 they were convicted after being implicated in the crime by three young black men who confessed to the robbery in exchange of a plea bargain that gave them 10 ten months. The sisters were not offered a plea and went to trial, each receiving two life sentences for a crime that netted 11 eleven dollars where no one was injured.

Don’t think these cases happen only in Mississippi. Another comparable case involves an Illinois social justice group seeking 11,000 signatures to present a petition to Illinois Governor Pat Quinn to order DNA testing to exonerate Johnnie Lee Savory.

Convicted of double murder by an all-white jury in 1977 at the age of fourteen, Johnnie Savory served thirty years in prison for a crime he did not commit, the group asserts. Released on parole in 2006, Savory still had not been officially exonerated by fall of 2009. After his release from prison, Johnnie attended a play about Emmett Till and found himself overwhelmed with emotion as he related to the horrible fate of another innocent fourteen-year old child. Johnnie’s deep connection to Emmett was cemented when he discovered that they share the same birthday, July 25th.

Johnnie and Emmett’s cases both represent a state-sponsored denial of justice and the loss of innocence for children, for communities of color, and for our entire nation, committee members said.

"However, these stories also are a part of a collective story for change, they contribute to the struggle for justice. Emmett’s death sparked change in this nation and his mother ensured that his legacy lives on for eternity. While Emmett’s voice was silenced, the strength and courage of so many in the civil rights movement allowed for their collective voice to be heard and heeded."

Also happening in Mississippi...

Even though the cold case is very famous, most Mississippi students have never heard of Emmett Till. And they haven’t been taught about the 1964 Freedom Summer when 1,000 volunteers swept into the state to register black voters.

Students haven’t heard of Fannie Lou Hamer or the story of Mae Bertha Carter, who defied gunfire and the loss of employment to send her children to previously all-white public schools in Drew, eventually winning a legal battle that confirmed their right to be there. “They don't know about ordinary citizens who faced extraordinary odds to bring change,” wrote Carmen K. Sisson, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor in the October 4, 2009 edition.

“But they're going to know all about it soon. In a groundbreaking reform — believed to be the first in the nation — Mississippi will require civil rights as part of its U.S. history curriculum. McComb schools made that move in 2006; but starting next fall, the stories of the civil rights era will be taught — and tested — in all public schools.”

This is going to be tough. But if Mississippi allows outside historians to participate and leaders refused refuse to be compromised, and if truth is the bottom line, the education program could set an example for the rest of this country.

Most states have their own civil rights histories that have not been covered. The stories are hidden and some might quite possibly just as horrid as what happened in Mississippi, especially in the western states where genocide was practiced on Native Americans and on the eastern seaboard where many wealthy families made their fortunes from the slave trade.

Even in my own (current) state of Iowa, the incarceration rate of blacks compared to the incarceration rate of whites is the highest in the nation. There is plenty of history to be researched and acted upon. Good jobs abound for citizen journalists.

Q. Why is it so important to think so much about the past?

I like to remember a quote by Winston Churchill, what he had to say about the importance of knowing our history: “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”

Q. Is there anything else important to know about all of this?

Unfortunately, there is something else that must be addressed. Old-fashioned Citizens Councils still meet around Mississippi and some politicians openly say it is perfectly acceptable to become members and attend meetings and special events.

When questioned about these organizations and their memberships, they slip slide away, typically answering they don’t agree with everything the councils stand for but they “do lots of good things, too.”

Q. Where can I find more books and more information about civil rights history in Mississippi?

Go to my blog, www.whokilledemmetttill.com where I’ve posted my Selected Biography, a link to lists of Mississippi victims of lynching and murders and a link to a growing civil rights library. This book has been recorded as an audio book and has also been published as a print book. Links to these versions are at the Emmett Till website mentioned above.
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Labels: black history, cold cases, Emmett Till FAQ, lynching, Mississippi civil rights history, racism

Suzanne Goldenberg of the Guardian writes:

This is a Mississippi story. On January 11 1966, a gold-toned Plymouth Fury carrying a group of voting-rights activists crashed on a stretch of road near the small town of Sidon in the west of the state. Two African-American women, Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett, were killed on that day. That much is certain. But in their deaths is buried a painful question that has gnawed at three generations of their families. Was this an ordinary car wreck, or were the two women, who had previously been threatened, shot at and burned in effigy because of their efforts to register black voters, targetted on that road? Engineered car crashes were a known tactic by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in the 1950s and 60s. Violent crimes against African-Americans were rarely investigated or punished. And even if the women were murdered by white supremacists, was it better, as some members of Keglar's own family believed, to leave such suspicions left unspoken?

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Labels: Adlena Hamlett, Birdia Keglar, cold cases, FBI cold cases, Mississippi cold cases

Have you contributed to Friends of Justice? I just made a small donation via PayPal and ask that you consider helping this important organization, too.

Friends of Justice is a nonprofit organization that works to uphold due process for all Americans. The organization's goal is to build a public consensus behind equal access to justice and respect for human dignity in our criminal justice system.

Friends of Justice formed in response to the infamous Tulia drug sting of 1999 in which 47 people, 39 of them African Americans, were rounded up based on the false testimony of an undercover agent. Friends of Justice emerged as a coalition of defendant’s families and other concerned citizens who believed the defendants were being prosecuted on faulty evidence. Because of the work of Friends of Justice, the Texas Legislature passed the Tulia Corroboration Bill, which has led to the exoneration of dozens of innocent people by raising the evidentiary standards for undercover testimony.

Friends of Justice is currently working on a wrongful conviction case in Winona, Miss., the same town where Fannie Lou Hamer was raped and beaten...

You can learn more by clicking HERE.

Labels: Alan Bean, Black History books, civil injustice, cold cases, Fanny Lou Hamer, Friends of Justice, lynch, Mississippi Civil Rights

At left, relatives of early Tallahatchie County civil rights activist, Birdia Keglar, take part in a road-naming ceremony for the woman who was killed in January of 1966.


I've been asked why I started and maintain this blog. An answer is deserved, and here it is.

After living in the Mississippi Delta for several years, and using the time to write a book about the Delta's civil rights history, I wanted to keep up with related issues and so I started this Blog. Historically, Mississippi's civil rights history has been plagued with unsolved and questionably resolved murders.

Today, the FBI is finally investigating some of the civil rights cold cases from the 1960s and 1970s, including several in Mississippi. This really is not not good enough, because there are many more unanswered questions about people who were killed or who simply disappeared because of their race and/or their politics.

Who killed Adlena Hamlett and Birdia Keglar? The women were coming home from a Jackson, Miss. civil rights meeting on January 11, 1966 when their car reportedly swerved and went off the road and they were killed. But no police reports were filed. There are no official records of what happened that night. One short newspaper account accompanies a host of stories that are told by friends and others. None of the stories seem to match. Keglar was the first black person to register and vote in Tallahatchie County since the days of Reconstruction ended. Hamlett was a long-time teacher and civil rights volunteer.

Some Mississippians still question who assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963. Byron De La Beckwith, a fellow Mississippian, was arrested and eventually found guilty of this crime. But what about the men who used to talk brag about their own involvement in coffee shops in Greenwood, Miss., their laughter and whispered conversations overheard by waitresses? What is to be made of the stories still floating around the Delta by black people who knew and loved Medgar Evers? These questions are legitimate and deserve answers for the sake of history.

The murders of James Earl Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, three young civil rights volunteers killed in Philadelphia, Miss. in the summer of 1964, have never been adequately resolved. At least a dozen men living in and around Philadelphia are said to have been involved yet many are still living and only one person has ever been convicted and sent to prison, 79-year-old self-acclaimed white supremacist, Edgar Ray Killen. But why won't the state of Mississippi's attorney general bring anyone else to trial?

Who really killed Drew, Miss. attorney Cleve McDowell in March of 1997? The attorney who was mentored by Medgar Evers and James Meredith (first black student admitted to the University of Mississippi) was shot and killed in his home but the police reports have never been released. Do they exist? What about the court records involving the trial of the man convicted of McDowell's murder? Why won't the Sunflower County Courts release these records? What is there to hide? Were others involved? McDowell's autopsy records suggest others were part of the murdering team. Try finding a copy of this record (I have one!). The young man convicted of the murder later recanted. What ever happened to him?

What prompted McDowell to tell his best friends that he would be "next in line" after hearing of Alabama attorney- friend Henry S. Mims' strange death three years earlier? What happened to McDowell's personal computer soon after he was killed? His firearms? His civil rights records kept on various cases including the killing of young Emmett Till? How did the fire get started in his office six months later-- the fire that "destroyed" all of McDowell's investigative records? Why don't McDowell's colleagues want to talk about their old friend?

And what about Sam Block? This early civil rights leader from Cleveland, Miss. died suddenly in his California home in 2000. His body was immediately removed from his home, says his sister Margaret Block, and was embalmed before it could be examined by the county's medical examiner. Block's computer disappeared shortly after his death.

Even the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has strange Mississippi ties. Was the state's infamous long-time senator James O. Eastland involved? Seven years before JFK was assassinated, the magnolia state's Eastland met for the first time with Guy Banister, a controversial CIA operative and retired FBI agent in charge of the Chicago bureau.

Banister -- remember him as the man who "pistol-whipped" David Ferrie in Oliver Stone's film "JFK" -- was later linked to Lee Harvey Oswald and Eastland through the senator's Senate Internal Security Subcommittee or SISS (sometimes called "SISSY"). All SISS records, of course, are classified.

Questions surround the murder of a white, racist Mississippi detective who worked for Banister and was killed within the year after Kennedy's assassination. Private investigator John D. Sullivan of Vicksburg bled to death after he was "accidentally" shot in the groin. He was with a "friend" after they came home from hunting.

A former FBI agent, Sullivan had worked for Banister both inside the FBI and privately; he was a private self-employed investigator who often did work for hire for the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission (Mississippi's mini CIA); the private white Citizens Councils (the state's uptown Klan made up of bankers, physicians, ministers, etc.) of which he was an active member; and he often worked for Eastland's SISS, as had Banister and Lee Harvey Oswald.

So much to figure out and so little time! I am trying to capture as much history as possible about Mississippi civil rights murders before available information disappears. Also, the blog's purpose is to keep up with any current activity on the part of law enforcement to resolve these cases.

Labels: Birdia Keglar, civil rights movement, Cleve McDowell, cold cases, Delta Blues, FBI, JFK assassination, Medgar Evers. Byran De La Beckwith, Mississippi

Tribute to Fannie Lou Hamer,civil rights activist, who often told the story of Joe Pullen

If we must die, let it not be like hogs: hunted and penned in an accursed spot! If we must die; oh let us nobly die…fighting back. – Claude McKay (1889-1948).

Historians now define the period from 1954 (the year of the Brown v. Board of Education decision) to 1965 as the Modern Civil Rights Movement. The African-American struggle for freedom and civil rights began long before Brown, however, and is a central part of U.S. history.

IN THE SMALL COTTON TOWN OF DREW, Mississippi the heart of the Mississippi Delta and birthplace of Archie Manning, some black elders still talk about a story passed down by their parents and relatives focusing on a 1923 gunfight raging into the early morning hours of December 15 between Joe Pullen, a tenant farmer and WWI veteran, and plantation manager W.T. Saunders.

The fight would turn out to be a watershed event in U.S. history.

Pullen shot and killed Saunders during an argument over money and then Pullen’s own life ended in a ditch at the edge of Drew when he was shot after an all-night gun battle.

The small town had buzzed with rumors that several dozen posse members were killed and possibly hundreds wounded before Pullen was taken down by machine gunners brought in from Clarksdale; some older Drew residents maintain that for years after the gunfight, a good number of people were using canes and displaying other signs of injuries received during the gun battle.

There are several versions of the Joe Pullen story, both written and spoken. In one account, nearly one thousand white men searched the swamps around Drew to find Pullen. The tenant farmer is said to have killed 4, 17 or 19 whites and wounded 8, 38 or 40 before he was machine gunned down. He either died immediately or was dragged through the streets and then killed.

Local news accounts of this event were few. The weekly Indianola newspaper carried one small paragraph on December 20, 1923 reporting that: “J. L. Doggett of Clarksdale and Kenneth Blackwood of Drew, posse men wounded Friday by negro, Joe Pullen, are reported as improving rapidly as could be expected.”

Associated Press reports offered more

Four men lost their lives in a spectacular gun battle which raged until 1 o’clock this morning between Joe Pullen, Negro tenant farmer, and a posse of several hundred men in the swamps of the Mississippi delta near Drew. Nine other wounded three probably fatally. Pullen was finally captured when four members of the posse stormed the drainage ditch in which he was entrenched. The Negro died an hour later from bullet wounds. The trouble started when Pullen’s employer came to his house to collect a debt.

Fannie Lou Hamer, well-known civil rights activist from Ruleville, often talked about the shoot-out that occurred when she was a child. Hamer said that Pullen’s body was dragged into town and that people cut off body parts to keep as souvenirs. “Mississippi was a quiet place for a long time [afterwards].”

While local press claimed that four white men had died “in defense of law and order,” Mrs. Hamer was told that Pullen had killed thirteen white men and wounded twenty-six others before dying.

L. C. Dorsey, a Ph.D. sociologist, remembered how as a young child living on a Sunflower
County plantation between Ruleville and Drew she heard from her father and relatives the story of Pullen. Dorsey said that her own father often did not receive the money due him as a sharecropper, and Dorsey believed the Pullen incident had much to do with his fear of questioning “the man” over money he was owed.

Pullen’s family protested to the President [Calvin Coolidge] who sent an investigative team “because the man had been in the service, and that was what his family talked about, that this man had served his country and this is how he was treated. He had done nothing wrong and had been killed for trying to defend himself against the crew,” Dorsey said.

Alabama historian, Nan Woodruff, author of American Congo, adds to the story that Sanders may have offered Pullen $150 to recruit families to work on the plantation, and when Pullen kept the money without providing the service, the fight began.

Woodruff terms Pullen’s gunfight another “watershed event” “much like the Elaine Massacre [Arkansas, 1919] as blacks challenged the structure of white supremacy throughout the 1920s.

“Black people with guns had always threatened planter authority, particularly when disputes
arose over crop contracts or merchant bills. Despite the threat of terror, black sharecroppers and laborers fought back when their lives were on the line, even if such actions resulted in their deaths.”

Woodruff and other black history researchers write that many Southern black people had always carried guns for hunting and self-protection, but the frequency of armed confrontations between planters and croppers, based on the frequency of reporting, may have increased in the decade following World War I.

THE RULING WHITE Delta families would keep their immense social, economic and political power; the planters’ bloc maintaining its supremacy or hegemony through an efficient capitalist economy rooted in black labor manipulation. Schooling and marriage built strong family alliances, and these white coalitions, much like Mafioso, expanded into local economies, from ownership and operation of cotton gins, to real estate, and banking.

Mississippi white planters simply ran all of Mississippi.

Labels: cold cases, Emmett Till, Fannie Lou Hamer, Joe Pullen, Mississippi murders, Mississipppi Delta

Sumner, Miss., site of the trial of Emmett Till's murderers. The Tallahatchie County Courthouse appears in the distance.Emmett Till,from Chicago,was visiting his uncle in the small cotton town of Money when he was murdered. The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, named for him, passed the U.S. Senate unanimously, Sept. 24.

by Ronni Mott
October 1, 2008

If there is any doubt that the wheels of power grind slowly, the U.S. Senate proved the point this week, when, after more than three years of delays, it unanimously passed the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which will strengthen federal and local agencies’ abilities to investigate and prosecute unsolved civil rights era murders.


The act, which was first proposed in July 2005, after the Senate passed a resolution to apologize for lynching, passed in the House June 20, 2007, with nearly unanimous approval (422-2). Since then, it has languished for more than 15 months in the Senate due entirely to the “hold” put on the bill by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., which the Democratic Caucus’s Senate Journal Web site characterized as “petty procedural maneuvers.”

Continued in the Jackson Free Press

Labels: Barack Obama, civil rights movement, Cleve McDowell, cold cases, Delta Blues, Emmett Till

A three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has vacated the conviction of former Ku Klux Klan (KKK) member James Ford Seale for his involvement in the 1964 deaths of two 19-year-old black teens.

The 71-year-old Seale has been in federal prison since his 2007 conviction.

AP has more.

Labels: Barack Obama, cold cases, Emmett Till, FBI, James Ford Seale, Mississippi murders

WASHINGTON (AP) - The House on Tuesday issued an unprecedented apology to black Americans for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow segregation laws.

"Today represents a milestone in our nation's efforts to remedy the ills of our past," said Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich., chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

The resolution, passed by voice vote, was the work of Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen, the only white lawmaker to represent a majority black district. Cohen faces a formidable black challenger in a primary face-off next week.

Congress has issued apologies before - to Japanese-Americans for their internment during World War II and to native Hawaiians for the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893. In 2005, the Senate apologized for failing to pass anti-lynching laws.

Five states have issued apologies for slavery, but past proposals in Congress have stalled, partly over concerns that an apology would lead to demands for reparations - payment for damages.
continued --

Labels: civil rights, cold cases, Jim Crow, Obama, slavery

from the Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center


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Philadelphia, MS Civil Rights Murders:

Neshoba county again fails to indict others

3 years and 6 months after Killen indictment

Another month has passed and Neshoba County and the State of Mississippi have again failed to indict others in the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
On January 6, 2005, a state grand jury in Philadelphia, Neshoba County, Mississippi returned the first-ever state indictment in the Neshoba murders case. Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen was indicted.
The grand jury heard testimony for less than one full day despite the fact that there were ten living suspects at that time. There was a massive amount of evidence against several of these suspects, including the 3,000 page transcript from the 1967 federal trial for conspiracy to deny civil rights.
That 1967 trial resulted in four of the suspects who were still living in 2005 being convicted. Why could not Neshoba County and the State of Mississippi at least indict them in 2005 on state charges?
And others should have been convicted in the 1967 federal trial.
Two of those suspects who were convicted on federal charges in 1967 are still alive now. Why cannot Neshoba County and the State of Mississippi indict them now? There was enough evidence to convict them on federal charges in 1967.

Why only Killen?

Why no more state indictments 3 years and 6 months after the indictment of Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen?

Labels: Chaney, cold cases, Goodman, Mississippi murders, Schwerner

forwarded courtesy of the
Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center

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Neshoba: "Why no news?" by Charlie Leck


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http://chasblogs. blogspot. com/2008/ 06/letter- to-editor. html

Saturday, June 28, 2008
Letter to the Editor


Why no news?
by Charlie Leck

John Gibson, one of the organizers of the rally, memorial service and protest that I attended in Mississippi last week, writes to say the Neshoba Country Democrat, which purports to be a newspaper, gave the rally and protest no coverage. Its office is only two blocks down the street from where we (over 200 of us) gathered to remember Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman and a host of other civil rights workers who were killed.

"Just got through checking the internet edition of the Neshoba Democrat. No mention of the 44th Annual Mississippi Civil Rights Martyrs Memorial Service, but I didn't expect any from them. The justice rally at the Neshoba County courthouse involved around 200 people and was only a block from the newspaper office. I suspect you remember many similar non-coverage of civil rights activities that occurred back in the day. I guess the memorial service and the justice rally was not consistent with the message that the editor of the Neshoba Democrat wanted to promote.

"Why only Edgar Ray Killen prosecuted in the Neshoba murders case?

"Why no coverage of the 44th Annual Mississippi Civil Rights Martyrs Memorial Service by the Neshoba Democrat?"

John, why not organize a letters to the editor campaign, telling the editor and the general public what fine speeches and music they missed?

Here's some contact information for the Neshoba Democrat and a copy of a letter I sent off today (Friday, 27 June 2008):

Carver Rayburn
Associate Editor and Publisher
Email: crayburn@neshobadem ocrat.com

Debbie Myers
Managing Editor
Email: dmyers@neshobademoc rat.com

Jim Prince
Editor & Publisher
Email: jprince@neshobademo crat.com

Dear Editor:

I've enjoyed reading through your on-line archives. You feature many outstanding articles about the terrible civil rights murders in 1964 and a great deal of valuable subsequent information about the investigation and trials. Thanks for having that all posted.

I was disappointed, however, not to see any news coverage of the 44th annual memorial service and rally that took place last week end (21 and 22 June 2008).

I traveled down from Minnesota with my wife and one of my children to attend the events surrounding the memorial service. We gathered in front of the Neshoba County Courthouse on an absolutely spectacular, sun-shiny day in Mississippi. The music was grand and the speeches were eloquent and informative.

It appears that your paper did not have a representative at that gathering and I think it was a huge mistake not to. This is an important event to both many of the citizens of your community and veterans of the Mississippi civil rights movement all over America.

I urge you to give the event "close-up and personal" coverage next year and in ensuing years. The protestors at that event continue to wonder why it is that only Edgar Ray Killen was prosecuted and none of the others who were equally involved. "Justice for all" lies at the heart of the American-way and it doesn't appear to be happening in Neshoba County.

Regards,

Charles H. Leck

Labels: Chaney, civil rights, cold cases, Emmett Till, Goodman, Mississippi, Obama, Schwerner

JACKSON, Miss. — As an African-American teenager in Louisiana, Keith Beauchamp tried interracial dating - behaviour that prompted his parents to tell him the grisly tale of Emmett Till, who was murdered for whistling at a white woman.

The story of Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago who had come to Mississippi to visit his uncle in August 1955, was seared into Beauchamp's mind and, when he moved to New York to begin his career as a filmmaker, the slaying was his first major project.

Beauchamp's 2005 documentary on Till, in large part, led the federal government to reopen the 1955 murder case. Last year, a grand jury declined to indict Carolyn Bryant Donham, the object of the whistle, on a manslaughter charge. The two men who brutally beat the teen and dumped his body in a river died years ago.

Still, Beauchamp's documentary expertise and his ability to persuade people to talk about buried secrets of the civil rights era have earned him a rare collaboration with the FBI.

Now, Beauchamp is filming a series of documentaries based on civil rights killings for the cable channel History as well as TV One. Any new evidence Beauchamp uncovers is shared with the FBI for its Cold Case Unit that focuses on crimes that have gone unpunished from that era.
Continued --

Labels: Beauchamp, civil rights, cold cases, FBI, KKK, lynching, Mississippi, Rev. George Lee

--Performed Cleve McDowell's Autopsy: Where were the bullets?
* * * * *

Innocence Project Asks State Board to Revoke Steven Hayne’s Medical License Based on Repeated Autopsy Misconduct

1,000-page formal allegation with Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure seeks to stop Hayne from conducting autopsies and practicing medicine

(JACKSON, MS; April 8, 2008) – Based on evidence that Steven Hayne, who conducts 80% of autopsies in Mississippi, has committed fraud and misconduct that sent an unknown number of innocent people to prison, the Innocence Project and the Mississippi Innocence Project today filed a formal allegation to revoke his license to practice medicine in Mississippi.

The allegation filed today with the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure outlines several violations – spanning two decades – of the Mississippi state law that regulates medical practice. Hayne’s practices have been questioned for several years and have come under increasing scrutiny after two men – Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, both of Noxubee County, Mississippi – were exonerated this year, 15 years after Hayne’s testimony helped convict them of capital crimes they did not commit.

If the State Board of Medical Licensure revokes Hayne’s medical license, he will not be able to conduct any autopsies for law enforcement in Mississippi or practice medicine in any other context in the state. Under the law, a doctor’s medical license is revoked if he or she engages in “incompetent professional practice, unprofessional conduct, [and] other dishonorable or unethical conduct that is likely to deceive, defraud, or harm the public.” The law also requires doctors to be “honest in all professional interactions including his or her medical expert activities” and directs medical experts “not [to] make or use any false, fraudulent, or forged statement or document.”

“Steven Hayne’s long history of misconduct, incompetence and fraud has sent truly innocent people to death row or to prison for life. This is precisely why regulations are in place to revoke medical licenses. Steven Hayne should never practice medicine in Mississippi again, and the complaint we filed today is an important step toward restoring integrity in forensic science statewide – and restoring confidence in the state’s criminal justice system,” said Peter Neufeld, Co-Director of the Innocence Project. The Innocence Project is a national organization affiliated with Cardozo School of Law; the Mississippi Innocence Project is based at the University of Mississippi School of Law.

The allegation filed today with the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure includes a 14-page summary letter and 1,000 pages of supporting documents, including trial transcripts and autopsy reports from several cases. The allegations that merit revoking Hayne’s medical license include:

Hayne misrepresents his credentials, claiming under oath to be the “chief state pathologist for the Department of Public Safety” (a position that does not exist) and claiming under oath to be “board-certified” in “forensic pathology” (when in fact he is not properly board-certified in forensic pathology). Papers filed with the Board today include several transcripts of testimony where Hayne has made these false claims.

Hayne testified falsely in Levon Brooks’ trial, leading to his wrongful conviction and sentence of life in prison without parole. The victim in the case had marks on her body, and the prosecution’s central theory of the crime was that they were human bite marks inflicted before the victim died. Hayne testified that marks on the victim’s hand in the case occurred prior to her death – a conclusion that is “simply wrong,” according to the allegation, and has no scientific basis.

Hayne testified falsely in Kennedy Brewer’s trial, leading to his wrongful conviction and death sentence. Just as it was in Brooks’ case, Hayne’s motive was to falsely claim that marks on the child’s body were inflicted by the assailant before she died. Even though the marks clearly were caused after the victim died, Hayne’s false assertion would support the prosecution’s central theory of the case. Hayne claimed in the autopsy report that he took biopsies from the so-called bite marks (to determine whether they occurred prior to her death), but testified at Brewer’s trial that he didn’t take biopsies of the marks. The most logical conclusion is that Hayne realized the biopsies would not support the false theory that the marks occurred before the victim’s death, so Hayne improperly stopped analyzing them. Hayne also testified in Brewer’s trial that the marks were caused by human teeth, rather than the expected decomposition or insect activity that regularly occurs after death. There was no scientific basis for Hayne’s testimony.

Hayne testified falsely in Tyler Edmonds’ trial, leading to his conviction and death sentence. Hayne claimed that he could tell from a bullet wound in the victim’s head that it was more likely that two people (rather than one person) had fired the fatal shot together. The Mississippi Supreme Court found Hayne’s testimony in the case “scientifically unfounded” and noted that his conclusion was not based on scientific methods or procedures.

Hayne issued an autopsy report – with no medical or scientific basis – supporting the prosecution case against Tina Funderburk, who is being charged with her daughter’s murder. An expert who Hayne himself brought into the case said the cause and manner of death could not be determined, but Hayne nevertheless examined the meager skeletal remains and said the child died from compression of the head and suffocation.

In four other cases, Hayne may have made false findings and potentially testified falsely under oath. In two of those cases, Hayne examined skeletons and said he could tell that the victims were strangled (even though the skeletons had no muscles). In another one of the cases, Hayne claimed in an autopsy report that he examined organs – when in fact it appeared the organs had not been touched.

“We have only presented the tip of the iceberg to the State Board of Medical Licensure, but this evidence shows Steven Hayne’s unprofessional, dishonorable and unethical conduct that has deceived, defrauded and harmed the public,” said W. Tucker Carrington, Director of the Mississippi Innocence Project.

The complaint filed today says, “We believe the conduct in this complaint alone is sufficient to justify immediate revocation of Dr. Hayne’s license … His work compromises the accuracy and integrity of medicine and criminal justice throughout the state. We urge you to put an end to his misconduct through an expeditious, thorough investigation of his work and revocation of his license.”

The Innocence Project and the Mississippi Innocence Project continue asking the state’s Commissioner of Public Safety to appoint and help secure funding for a State Medical Examiner. The State Legislature created the position in the 1980s to provide assistance and oversight for medical examiners across the state. The position has been vacant for over a decade, leaving no oversight of Hayne’s autopsies and no system for training and recruiting qualified pathologists to conduct autopsies in Mississippi.

For the summary letter of today’s allegation, go to: http://www.innocenceproject.org/docs/Letter_to_Medical_Board.pdf

For more on the Brewer and Brooks cases, go to: http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/1175.php

For the letter from the Innocence Project and the Mississippi Innocence Project to the Commissioner of Public Safety, urging him to fill and help fund the State Medical Examiner position, go to: http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/1173.php

For an op-ed earlier this month from a former Commissioner of Public Safety, calling on officials to fill and fund the State Medical Examiner position, go to: http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080330/OPINION/803300302/1046

For more background on Steven Hayne, see “CSI Mississippi,” a Reason Magazine investigative report by Senior Editor Radley Balko, at http://www.reason.com/news/show/122458.html.

###

Eric Ferrero
Director of Communications
The Innocence Project
Office: 212-364-5346
Cell: 646-342-9310
100 Fifth Ave., 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10011
www.innocenceproject.org

MORE on Hayne ... Reason Magazine, November 2007

In a remarkable capital murder case earlier this year, the Mississippi Supreme Court, by an 8-to-1 vote, tossed out the expert testimony of Steven Hayne. The defendant was Tyler Edmonds, a 13-year-old boy accused of killing his sister’s husband. Hayne, Mississippi’s quasi-official state medical examiner, had testified that the victim’s bullet wounds supported the prosecution’s theory that Edmonds and his sister had shot the man together, each putting a hand on the weapon and pulling the trigger at the same time.

“I would favor that a second party be involved in that positioning of the weapon,” Hayne told the jury. “It would be consistent with two people involved. I can’t exclude one, but I think that would be less likely.”

Testifying that you can tell from an autopsy how many hands were on the gun that fired a bullet is like saying you can tell the color of a killer’s eyes from a series of stab wounds. It’s absurd. The Mississippi Supreme Court said Hayne’s testimony was “scientifically unfounded” and should not have been admitted. Based on this and other errors, it ordered a new trial for Edmonds.

MORE on Hayne ... Reason Magazine, November 2007

Labels: Charles Eddie Moore, civil rights, Cleve McDowelll, cold cases, James Ford Seale, Mississippi

Cleve McDowell and the Rev. Jesse Jackson -- cotton dust flies in the air.

Eleven years after the murder of a popular Mississippi lawyer, some still assert the murderers of Cleve McDowell were never caught. This criminal act deserves a cold case investigation -- while it still is warm.

On the morning of March 13, 1997, the lifeless body of McDowell, first black student admitted to the University of Mississippi's law school and a long-time civil rights advocate, was discovered by his youngest sister propped up against a bathroom wall.

Throughout his Drew, Miss. home, dozens of powerful handguns and rifles -- "always one within his reach," his sister and friends say -- had been strategically placed by McDowell for self-protection. So why didn't he use one to save his life?

What happened to bullets taken from McDowell's body during the state's autopsy? Would such evidence show if more than one shooter was involved? What happened to his guns and to all of his investigative files?

For over forty years, McDowell studied murders taking place during the modern civil rights movement. Where is all of the information he collected on the killings of Emmet Till, Medgar Evers and others?

There've been some attempts to explain what took place when McDowell was murdered, and one man went to jail. But nothing makes sense when you look at the whole story and talk to McDowell's friends.

More on McDowell and others ...

Labels: blues, Cleve McDowell, cold cases, Emett Till, lynching, Mississippi, Mississippi Delta

MARY SANCHEZ COMMENTARY


Civil-rights era injustices still haunt us
By MARY SANCHEZ


Anyone who has ever uttered an apology knows the power of these three words: “I am sorry.”

Apologies are the precursors to forgiveness, to healing. They’re necessary to put bitterness behind us and let us move on with our lives. This came to mind when I heard the news that more evidence had been uncovered in three of the most infamous unsolved civil rights murders.

In 1964, civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were working to register black voters in Mississippi when they were abducted by Klan members near the town of Philadelphia. All three were shot to death, then buried to hide the crimes. Chaney, the only black man in the group, was also severely beaten.

Now, a December series of newspaper articles in The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., has uncovered witnesses and evidence that could lead to new charges. Previously sealed FBI documents show that one vote kept a man from facing charges two years ago when a grand jury re-examined the case. One vote of innocence came from the man’s relative — clearly a violation of justice.

The last time new evidence in this case was uncovered, a then 80-year-old former Klansman was convicted. Stooped, on oxygen and confined to a wheelchair during much of the 2005 proceedings, Edgar Ray Killen was sentenced to 60 years for manslaughter.

Continued --

Labels: Chaney, cold cases, Goodman, James Chaney, Meridian, Mississippi murders, Schwerner, voting rights

Adlena Hamlett, a retired Mississippi school teacher, was murdered with Birdia Keglar in 1965

THE NAMES ON THE SIGNS — Lamar Smith, Benjamin Brown, Wharlest Jackson, Adlena Hamlett ? were reminders of some of Mississippi's darkest days during the civil rights movement.

About 60 people rallied on the steps of the Capitol with signs in hand Monday, demanding that the state become more aggressive in investigating the deaths while there's time to bring culprits to justice.

John Gibson, a rally organizer, said the group has identified 55 Mississippians killed during the movement, which started in the 1950s.

"In the vast majority of these cases, there has been no justice," he said. "We are here to demand a full measure of justice for all of Mississippi's civil rights martyrs."

Continued --

Labels: Adlena Hamlett, Birdia Keglar, civil rights movement, Cleve McDowell, Clinton Melton, cold cases, Emmett Till, Henry Dee, Henry Hezekiah Dee, Herbert Lee, James Chaney, Medgar Evers, Mississippi

# Activists, others to demand state officials investigate old cases

By Chris Joyner
chris.joyner@ jackson.gannett. com


SCHEDULE

Monday

# 11 a.m.: Rally participants will gather at Mississippi Coliseum in
downtown Jackson

# 11:30 a.m.: March to state Capitol begins.

# Noon to 2 p.m.: Rally at Capitol and speakers

Civil rights veterans and supporters will gather Monday on the Capitol
lawn to press state officials to aggressively investigate decades-old
deaths of martyrs to the movement.

Richard Coleman, president of the Meridian chapter of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said organizers
plan to call out the names of prominent suspects in the crimes and
demand government officials make complete investigations into the deaths.

"We want to target anyone that can influence justice in this state and
in this country," he said. "If it's the governor, if it's the attorney
general, if it's the president, we want justice for all in this country."

Dubbed a "justice rally," the event will include speakers from the
civil rights movement and family members of victims. Prominent among
them will be the son and grandson of Louis Allen, a Amite County man
who was shot to death in front of his home in 1964.

Continued --

Labels: Birdia Keglar, Charles Moore, civil rights movement, Cleve McDowell, cold cases, Emmett Till

Memories of three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi are kept alive as an Alabama sociologist joins a small group demonstrating this past summer in Philadelphia, Miss.

Landmark civil rights trial was Hattiesburg American's top story 40 years ago
By PATRICK MAGEE

Editor's note: The Hattiesburg American, which is celebrating its 110th anniversary as a newspaper, this week is looking at past editions on this date. Today: Oct. 18, 1967.

A prosecutor stood before an all-white federal court jury in Meridian and asked the group to convict 17 of 18 men on conspiracy charges in the 1964 deaths of three young civil rights workers, an Associated Press story reported on the front page of the Oct. 18, 1967, edition of the Hattiesburg American.

Story continued --

Labels: civil rights movement, cold cases, FBI, Goodman, James Chaney, Meridian, Mississippi Delta, Schwerner

Reward offered in 1964 slaying; efforts to find Louis Allen's killer increase after solving other cold cases

Family members of Louis Allen, a Liberty resident shot to death 43 years ago in what the FBI is investigating as a civil rights-era slaying, are offering $20,000 for information leading to the arrest of his killers.

Allen's namesake grandson, Louis Allen Jr., said family members suspect the killer is alive and that other people were involved.

The Allen case is one of more than 100 civil rights-era slaying under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Louis Allen Jr. said he hopes the reward offered by the Mississippi Religious Leadership Conference will spark more interest in finding justice for his grandfather.

Efforts to solve the case have gained steam, following prosecutions in other civil rights-era cold cases, including two life sentences handed down this summer to James Ford Seale of Roxie in the May 2, 1964, kidnapping of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore. The teens were beaten and drowned.

Story Continued --

Labels: Birdia Keglar, Charles Eddie Moore, Clinton Melton, cold cases, David Halberstam, Emmett Till, Herbert Lee, James Ford Seale, Louis Allen, Mississippi murders

Tallahatchie River, near site where Emmett Till's body was found

October 2, 2007
BY SHELIA BYRD Associated Press Writer
JACKSON, Miss.---- The county where Chicago teenager Emmett Till's body was found after he allegedly whistled at a white woman officially apologized Tuesday for the way the crime was handled, more than 50 years after the boy died.
Tallahatchie County Board of Supervisors and Sheriff William Brewer Jr. signed the resolution that included an apology to Till's family. They also unveiled a marker commemorating the 14-year-old's death.

Continued --

Labels: Aaron Henry, Cllinton Melton, cold cases, Eastland, Emmett Till, Fannie Lou Hamer, Henry Dee, Mississippi Delta, Mississippi murders