CRRJ Case Watch

Background:
Reverend Charles H. Baldwin (C.H. Baldwin), 73, was killed when he was struck by a ten-pound rock thrown from a convertible driven by four white men. C.H. Baldwin was walking a cow across the street when the men struck him with the rock. The rock hit his leg and his head hit the pavement as he fell to the ground. He died on the way to Huntsville hospital. Police arrested Charles Connally, 31, William Walling, 22, Walter Thompson, 20 and Doc Hill, 22. The four defendants, all from New Hope, Alabama, worked for manufacturing companies and textile mills in the area.

The sheriff stated that the men claimed the assault was a “prank.” At the time, there was a great deal of tension between poor whites and blacks, in part due to competition for work.

In 1954, the population of Huntsville was only 8,000. Seven cotton mills surrounding the town were incorporated into it in 1956, doubling the population. The town grew quickly, and by 1957 there were 32,000 people in Huntsville. In 1956, the town was known for extreme racism.

Legal Status:
Although Charles Connally was driving the car, he was not charged. Neither was passenger William Walling. Walter Thompson was charged with murder, but the charges were dropped when he agreed to testify against Doc Hill. After a four day jury trial, Doc Hill was sentenced to manslaughter. The manslaughter verdict was based on the jury’s conclusion that because the men did not know C.H. Baldwin, it was an accident. Hill was sentenced to a one year term of “hard labor.” The District Attorney was Glenn Manning. The defense lawyer was the well-known Ralph Ford.

Resources:

Four Ala. Men Held in Rock Death of Cleric, Daily Defender, April 25, 1956

Background:
Bessie McDowell was well known in her community. She worked as a domestic and was employed by the VFW Auxiliary to prepare meals for the Junior Chamber of Commerce. In June 1956, McDowell was shot to death by Claude Ingle, a white loan collector, as she lay sleeping in her bed. Ingle and his 23 year-old son, Bobby Ray Ingle, went to McDowell’s home to collect a debt owed by her nephew, Charlie C. Williams. When Williams offered to pay back the loan the following day, the loan collector’s son slapped him. As Williams withdrew into the house, the loan collector shot his .32 caliber revolver through an open window of the house, ostensibly to frighten Williams. The bullet struck McDowell in the head and she died minutes later on the way to the hospital.

Legal Status:
Claude Ingle was indicted for murder and eventually convicted of manslaughter. Ingle was sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay a $500 fine. Second-degree murder charges against Bobby Ray Ingle were dropped. Ingle appealed his conviction, which was affirmed by the Court of Appeals of Alabama without opinion. Ingle v. State, 39 Ala.App. 698, 99 So.2d 554 (1957).

Resources:
"Another forgotten found," The Anniston Star, March 25, 2007.

Background:
At 25 years old, Edwards was a Winn Dixie truck driver. On January 23, 1957, Edwards was abducted by Klansmen and was ordered to jump off of the Tyler-Goodwin Bridge into the Alabama River.

Legal Status:
In 1976, Klansman Raymond Britt confessed to the crime. Sonny Kyle Livingston, Henry Alexander, and James York were charged with the murder. However, Judge Frank Embry dismissed the case stating that the cause of death was not determined. In 1997, as a result of requests by Willie Edwards’ daughter Malinda Edwards, District Attorney Brooks, working with State Medical Examiner Dr. James Lauridson opened a fresh investigation into the case. Based on Edwards’ remains, Dr. Lauridson ruled the cause of Edwards’ death to be homicide caused by having been forced to jump into the Alabama River 41 years earlier by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Brooks filed a motion to have Edwards’ death certificate reflect Dr. Lauridson’s findings. Judge Charles Price ordered the Alabama Department of Vital Statistics to change Edwards’ cause of death from unknown to homicide.

District Attorney Brooks took the case back to the Montgomery County Grand Jury in 1999. The Grand Jury declined to return an indictment.

Resources:
Justice Still Absent in Bridge Death, Montgomery Advertiser, March 2, 1999.

Murder, Memory And the Klan, A special report; Widow Inherits a Confession To a 36-Year-Old Hate Crime, New York Times, September 4, 1993.

Background:
In this well-known case, Klansmen planted a bomb in the basement of the
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church killing four girls and injuring a fifth person.

Legal Status:
Four members of United Klans of America were named as suspects: Bobby Frank Cherry, Thomas Blanton, Herman Cash, and Robert “Dynamite Bob” Chambliss. In 1971, Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley re-opened the investigation and prosecuted Klan leader Robert Chambliss who was convicted in 1977. His conviction was sustained on appeal. Chambliss v. State, 373 So.2d 1185 (1979). The Supreme Court of Alabama denied certiorari to hear the case later that year. Ex parte Chambliss, 373 So.2d 1211 (Ala. 1979). He died in prison in 1985, maintaining his innocence until the end. In 1988 Gary A. Tucker admitted to helping to set the bomb. Federal and state prosecutors pursued further investigations but no charges were filed. In 1997, the FBI re-opened the case once again. On May 17, 2000, the FBI announced that the Cahaba Boys, a subgroup of the Ku Klux Klan, had carried out the bombing. Robert Chambliss, Herman Cash, Thomas Blanton, and Bobby Cherry, who belonged to the Cahaba Boys, were assigned responsibility for the crime. Cash had died in 1994 and Chambliss had already been convicted, so in May 2001, then US Attorney G. Douglas Jones prosecuted the two other men. Thomas Blanton was found guilty on four counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life. Blanton’s conviction was affirmed in 2003 and his subsequent petitions for appeals were denied. Blanton v. State, 886 So.2d 850 (Ala. Crim. App. 2003), cert. denied 886 So.2d 886 (Ala. 2004), cert. denied 543 U.S. 878 (2004). In May 2002, Frank Bobby Cherry was found guilty of four counts of murder and four counts of arson and sentenced to life in prison. Cherry’s conviction was affirmed by the Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama and his petition for certiorari was dismissed by the Supreme Court of Alabama after his death. Cherry v. State, 933 So.2d 377 (Ala. Crim. App. 2004), cert. denied 933 So.2d 393 (Ala. 2006).

Resources:
www.4littlegirls.com

Father Recalls Deadly Blast At Ala. Baptist Church, National Public Radio, September 15, 2008.

As Church Bombing Trial Begins in Birmingham, the City's Past Is Very Much Present, New York Times, April 25, 2001.

Birmingham Bomber Bobby Frank Cherry Dies in Prison at 74, Washington Post, November , 2004.

Background:
At 16 years old, Robinson was shot in the back by Officer Jack Parker on the same day as the Sixteenth Street Church bombing. Police said that Robinson had thrown stones at white youth driving through the area. The police shot Robinson when he refused to stop throwing stones.

Legal Status:

It is unclear whether legal action was taken in this case.

Resources:
Blast Kills Four Children; Riots Follow; Two Youths Slain; State Reinforces Birmingham Police, Washington Post, September 16, 1963.

Clayborne Carson, ed. The Student Voice, 1960-1965, 212 (1990).

Glenn T. Eskew, But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle, 321 (1997).

Background:
Ware was a 13 year-old eighth grader, an A student and football player who dreamed of becoming a lawyer on the day he was gunned down in the aftermath of the Birmingham church bombing. Ware and his brother James were returning home from a shopping trip, unaware that the bombing had occurred, when they encountered Larry Joe Sims and Michael Lee Farley. Sims and Farley, both 16, were riding along on their motorcycle coming from a segregationist rally. Farley gave Sims his handgun to admire. When the white teenagers saw the Ware brothers, Farley told Sims to shoot, to “scare them.” Sims shot Virgil twice, once in the cheek and once in the chest.

Legal Status:
Sims was charged with first-degree murder and convicted by an all-white jury of second-degree manslaughter. Farley pled guilty to the same charge. Both were sentenced to seven months in jail, but the judge who presided over the cases suspended their sentences, substituting two years’ probation.

Resources:
B’Ham Justice: Tougher On Bricks Than Bullets Or Bombs, Jet, April 16, 1964.

Clayborne Carson, ed. The Student Voice, 1960-1965, 212 (1990).

The Legacy Of Virgil Ware, Time, September 22, 2003.

Relatives of Slain Youth Accept Judge's Apology, New York Times , November 11, 1997.

Background:
On February 18, 1965, around 500 people gathered at Zion United Methodist Church in Marion, AL to protest the arrest of a young civil rights worker. At night, the group left the church and peacefully marched to the jail during a voting rights protest. The group was confronted by city police officers, sheriffs, deputies and Alabama State Troopers. Someone turned off the street lights and the uniformed officers, as well as white men dressed in civilian clothing, attacked the protesters.

About ten troopers chased a group of protesters into Mack’s Café and proceeded to hit customers and protesters. The troopers clubbed 82 year old Cager Lee to the floor and his daughter Viola Jackson rushed to Lee’s aid. Viola’s son, 26 year old Jimmie Lee Jackson tried to help his mother and was shot in the stomach by the police. He was taken to the hospital and died of wounds on February 26, 1965.

Black citizens of Marion were outraged. Shortly after Jackson’s death, civil rights leaders proposed a march to Montgomery from Selma, in part to protest the Jackson killing.

Legal Status:
At the time of the shooting, a Perry County grand jury refused to indict James Bonard Fowler, a state trooper.

In a 2005 interview Fowler stated that he shot Jackson in self-defense. Michael Jackson, Perry County’s first Black district attorney, reopened the investigation after his election in 2005.

A Perry County grand jury indicted Fowler on May 9, 2007 on first-degree and second-degree murder charges in the shooting death of Jimmie Lee Jackson. Fowler’s trial was set for October 20, 2008, but was postponed for a defense appeal of a pretrial ruling. In September 2009, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the lower court's decision, so the prosecution does not have to turn over his witness list to the defense (citing concerns for witness intimidation). It is speculated that the trial will begin soon.

Resources:
Townsend Davis, Weary Feet, Rested Souls, 121-123 (1999).

The Anniston Star, March 6, 2005.

Jimmie Lee Jackson’s family in Anniston says reopening the case means justice for them, The Anniston Star, May 9, 2007.

Indictment Brought in Civil-Rights-Era Death, Washington Post, May 10, 2007.

Trial delayed in 1965 civil rights slaying in Ala., Montgomery Advertiser, October 8, 2008

Background:
Thad Christian, a 54 year old father of seven, was killed by a shotgun blast while walking home from fishing.

Legal Status:
Robert E. Haynes, a 41 year-old white man, was charged with murder. In May 1966, Haynes pled guilty to first-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Resources:
White Man Held in Slaying of Negro in Anniston, Ala., New York Times, August 30, 1965.

SPLC gives FBI case files on civil rights-era killings, The Decatur Daily, February, 24, 2007.

Background:
Williamson, 31, was active in the voting rights efforts of the Wilcox County Branch of the NAACP. Williamson’s body was recovered from the Alabama River after it snagged on a fisherman’s line.

Legal Status:
Local Sheriff P.C. Jenkins said there was no sign of foul play, but members of Williamson’s family claim the Sheriff never spoke to them about the possible causes of Williamson’s death. The county coroner told reporters at the time that an autopsy would be performed and Williamson’s death certificate states that an autopsy was performed. However, neither the state Department of Forensic Sciences nor the local funeral home that handled the burial has any record of an autopsy. There is no record of any local investigation of the death.

The FBI included Williamson in its 2006 Civil Rights-Era Cold Case Initiative.

Resources:
A more complete picture of a forgotten, long ago, death, The Anniston Star, February 17, 2008.

Background:
At about 1:40 a.m. on November 20, 1967 Elmore County Deputy Sheriff Harvey Conner stopped Rueben Clark’s car; Motley was riding in the back seat. When Motley objected to the stop and to Conner’s demand for Clark’s driver’s license, Conner beat him about the head with a slapjack, a kind of batting weapon. Conner called for backup, then drove Motley to jail with the two state troopers who had responded to his call. Motley died of his injuries while in custody.

Legal Status:
An Elmore County grand jury refused to indict Sheriff Harvey Conner for any crime connected with Motley’s death. Federal prosecutors tried Conner on the charge of depriving Motley of his civil rights. Conner’s defense was that although he had hit Motley several times in self-defense at the time of the arrest, the fatal injury occurred when Motley drunkenly fell into a fence post on his walk from the police car to the jail.

Rueben Clark and Isom Atkins, a prisoner who was in the jail at the time of Motley’s arrest, testified for the prosecution. Conner had ordered Atkins to clean up the car that the police had brought Motley in. Atkins testified that the interior of car was covered with blood.

A jury found Connor not guilty after deliberating for 100 minutes.

Resources:
Witnesses Saw ‘Blood All Over’ But the Jury Set Harvey Conner Free, The Southern Courier, April 29-30, 1967.

Background:

On June 4, 1954, Isadore Banks disappeared. He was later found tied to a tree, mutilated, and burned alive.

Banks was a pillar in the African-American community. He was a relatively wealthy landowner and had helped to bring electricity to the town of Marion, located in a region of Arkansas with a long history of racial violence. Moreover, Banks was a veteran of World War I.

Rumors circulated that Banks had continually refused to sell his land to whites, and that Banks was involved with a white woman who rented her land to him. At one point prior to his murder Banks was forced to flee his home. A mob of whites with dogs showed up at his home, but Banks could not be found at that time.

Banks was a month away from celebrating his 60th birthday when he was discovered tied to a tree and burned alive.

50 years after he was burned alive and 90 years after he served his country in WWI, Banks was finally given a proper military funeral.

Legal Status:
Julian Fogleman, the city attorney for Marion at the time, is not aware as to whether a coroner's inquiry was ever launched in order to gather facts on the killing. Fogleman is still alive and practicing law today (Fogleman was also the assistant prosecutor of Marion at the time of the murder of 16-year-old Andrew Lee Anderson in 1963). To date, no one has been held responsible for the murder of Isadore Banks.

Resources:
See CNN's report "50 years after he was chained and set afire, WWI veteran is honored" from April 12, 2010.

Chain Arkansas Farmer To Tree, Set Him Afire, The Chicago Defender (National Edition), June 26, 1954

Chained To Tree, Burned To Death, Pittsburgh Courier, June 19, 1954

Background:
Anderson was killed by a group of white men and Crittenden County sheriff’s deputies after a white woman complained that he had molested her 8 year old daughter. Anderson was allegedly shot with a high powered rifle in a bean field outside of Marion, Arkansas. Anderson's family stated that he was questioned for several hours after the shooting before finally receiving medical attention. By the time he was taken to Crittenden County Memorial Hospital it was too late.

Legal Status:
A coroner’s jury ruled justifiable homicide. No arrests were made.

Resources:

Shooting of Arkansas Negro is Ruled Justifiable by Jury, New York Times, July 18, 1963

Background:
Harry and Harriett Moore were lead human rights activists in Brevard County, FL. In 1934, they organized the first Brevard County branch of the NAACP. As executive secretary of the Progressive Voters League, Harry helped break down registration barriers and was responsible for the registration of tens of thousands of black Americans throughout Florida.

On Christmas evening in 1951, the couples’ 25th wedding anniversary, members of the Klan exploded a bomb in their home under their bedroom, killing them both. No arrests were made. This was the first killing of prominent civil rights leaders and it was one of the sparks igniting the modern civil rights movement.

Legal Status:
Joseph Neville Cox, the secretary of the Orlando chapter of the Klan, committed suicide a day after being questioned by the FBI about the case in 1952. In 1997 another Klansman, Ed Spivey, gave a deathbed confession that Cox had masterminded the murders. In 1990, investigators concluded that the responsible parties had died. In 2005, the state attorney general reopened the case again and reached the same conclusion. In addition to Cox and Spivey, the attorney general’s report named Earl J. Brooklyn and Tillman H. Blevin, then both Klan members, as responsible for the bombing.

Resources:
Reopened probe may close chapter on racial slaying, Palm Beach Post, February 13, 2005.

Crist announces results of Harry T. Moore murder investigation, Attorney General Charlie Crist news release, August 16, 2006.

Investigative Report of Attorney General Charlie Crist

Background:
Thomas Brewer was born on November 16, 1894 in Saco, Alabama. He graduated from high school and college in Selma and received his medical degree from Meharry Medical College in Nashville. In the 1920s he joined a black medical community in Georgia and also became a political activist. In 1939, he helped to form a chapter of the NAACP in Columbus. During the 1940s, Brewer started to receive death threats from hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. On February 18, 1956, Brewer was shot and killed seven times outside of his office by Lucio Flowers.

Legal Status:
Lucio Flowers owned a store beneath Brewer’s office and said that he shot Brewer in self-defense after a disagreement. Police and a grand jury accepted Flowers’s story. About a year after Brewer’s death, Flowers was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head. His death was officially ruled as suicide.

Resources:
Stephen G. N. Tuck, Beyond Atlanta: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Georgia, 1940-1980 (2003).

Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (1987).

Brewer's Life, Death Helped Shape Our History, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, April 24, 1988.

Brewer Was on Collision Course with 1950s, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, May 1, 1988.

Shots in Rapid Succession' Death to Brewer, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, May 8, 1988.

Background:
Maybelle Mahone, a thirty-year old mother of six, was killed after "sassing" a white man. B.T. Dukes, a seventy-one-year old white farmer, shot Ms. Mahone using a shotgun. The shooting took place at her home, about two miles from Molena, Georgia.

Legal Status:
Mr. Dukes was initially found guilty and received a life sentence on August 1, 1957. He was later found guilty by reason of insanity.

Resources:
Mother Slain for 'Sassing',Daily Defender, Dec 10, 1956.

Negro Mother Slain, New York Times, Dec 7, 1956.

Background:
James Brazier was arrested for speeding by police officer “Y” in Dawson in November 1957. The police report attributes these words to Brazier: “When I first entered the door of the jail, ‘Y’ hit me on the back of the head and knocked me down and said, ‘You smart son-of-a-bitch, I been wanting to get my hands on you for a long time.’ I said, ‘Why you want me for?’ ‘Y’ said, ‘You is a nigger who is buying new cars and we can’t hardly live. I’ll get you yet.”

On April 15, 1958, Brazier was beaten in front of his 10 year old son who pled with the officers to stop beating his father. ‘Y’ kicked Brazier twice in the groin, slammed the car door on his legs, threw a hat full of sand onto his bloody face, and drove off. Brazier died five days later. Officer Y was never brought to justice.

Legal Status:
In 1957, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a five volume report. The Brazier matter is included in Volume Five.

Resources:
Dawdling on the Corner, Time, November 24, 1961.

Brazier v. Cherry,188 F.Supp. 817 (M.D. Ga. 1960).

Brazier v. Cherry,293 F.2d 401 (5th Cir. 1961).

Background:
Willie Countryman was shot and killed in his backyard by a policeman. Witnesses allege that this same officer participated in the beating of James Brazier, who died on April 20, 1958 from a beating by a Dawson law enforcement officer.

Legal Status:
It is uncertain whether legal action will be taken on this case.

Resources:
Martin Luther King, Clayborne Carson, Ralph Luker, Penny A. Russell, The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Volume IV: Symbol of a Movement, January 1957-December 1958 (2000).

Background:
On May 16, 1960, a bomb exploded underneath the home of Jethro Green on Guyler Street in Ringgold. Green’s wife, Mattie, died in the bombing. Mattie Green was a 32 year old mother of six. Georgia Governor Ernest Vandiver offered a reward for information related to this bombing, but no suspects were found.

Legal Status:
In 2007, the FBI re-examined this case in connection with the Civil Rights-Era Cold Case Initiative. No suspects were ever arrested or questioned. FBI redacted files do not indicate any official suspects.

Resources:
FBI to re-examine civil rights-era bombing in Ringgold, Rome-News Tribune, March 1, 2007.

Civil-Rights Cold Case Investigations Stir Skepticism, NPR, All Things Considered, March 4, 2007.

Background:
A.C. Hall, a black youth, was killed after being shot in the back by two policeman. At least fifteen hundred Maconites marched on City Hall after Hall’s murder.

Legal Status:
It is uncertain whether legal action will be taken on this case.

Resources:
Stephen G. N. Tuck, Beyond Atlanta: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Georgia, 1940-1980 (2003).

Background:
On September 16, 1968, twenty-one year old Carol Jenkins was stabbed to death with a screwdriver while selling encyclopedias door-to-door. No arrests were made at the time and the case went unsolved for 34 years.

Legal Status:
On May 8, 2002, Klan member Kenneth Richmond was arrested after his daughter Shirley Richmond McQueen identified him as the killer. State police detectives who were part of a “cold crimes” squad, were led to McQueen by an anonymous letter. McQueen confessed that she witnessed the slaying as a 7-year-old child. Detectives were convinced that her story was true when she remembered a key detail - that Jenkins was wearing a yellow scarf. McQueen recalls that her father said at the time of the slaying, “She got what she deserved.”

Richmond never went to trial for Jenkin’s murder. He was declared incompetent to stand trial, and, on August 31, 2002 he died of cancer.

Resources:
The Carol Jenkins Slaying: Suspect dies before trial in 1968 Martinsville stabbing, The Indianpolis Star, September 1, 2002.

Who Killed Carol Jenkins, The New Yorker, January 7, 2002

Indiana Man Held in Woman’s 1968 Slaying Dies of Cancer, Los Angeles Times, September 1, 2002.

Slow Justice: Three Decades After a Racist Murder, An Eyewitness IDs the Alleged Killer: Her Father, People,
July 15, 2002.

Suspect pleads in 1964 murders, USA Today,
January 25, 2007.

Indiana Town: From Racist Past to Primary Present, NPR, All Things Considered, April 30, 2008.

Background:
On December 14, 1964, Frank Morris was awakened at 2 a.m. to the sound of glass breaking at his shoe store. Morris lived in a room adjoining the shoe store that he owned. Morris was held at gun point and forced to remain in the building as two to three men torched it. Morris died in the fire.

Legal Status:
There is an extensive ongoing investigation of this killing by the Justice Department. On December 10, 2008 the FBI announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of those responsible for the Morris murder.The Syracuse Law School Cold Case Initiative is representing the family members of Frank Morris in this matter.

Resources:
U.S. Attorney to hold status meeting Friday on Morris probe, Concordia Sentinel, October 8, 2008.

New Clues Sought in “Diabolical” 1964 Slaying, CNN, July 17, 2008.

FBI Press Release, December 10, 2008

Was Frank Morris Doing too well in Business?, Concordia Sentinel, March 13, 2008

Background:
Moore was the first black sheriff’s deputy in Washington Parish, LA. Exactly one year after his appointment, at the age of 34, he was shot to death in an ambush while driving home from duty.

Legal Status:
White supremacist Ernest Ray McElveen was arrested for murder. However, charges were dropped. In 1990, the FBI reopened and then closed the case. In 2001, the case was again reopened and again stalled. McElveen died in 2003, but two additional suspects who might have been involved may still be alive. Unfortunately, law enforcement has not identified any additional suspects allegedly involved in the attack on Officers Moore and Rogers.

Resources:

Deputy Sheriff's Murder Still Unsolved, Southern Poverty Law Center, Summer 2009.

FBI reopens file on race hate murders, BBC News, May, 30, 2007.

The Officer Down Memorial Page

FBI Wanted Posting

Background:
George Lee was born in 1904 in Edwards, Mississippi. He was killed in 1955. In the 1930s, Lee became a preacher in Belzoni. A supporter of civil rights and a local NAACP official, Lee served as Vice President of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership. He was one of the first black people registered to vote in Humphreys County in the mid 20th century. Lee was a successful local business leader and the pastor of four churches. With his wife, Rosebud, Lee also ran a small printing business.

When Rev. Lee tried to vote, the county sheriff, Ike Shelton, refused to accept his poll tax payment. Rev. Lee reported this to federal authorities and was subsequently allowed to vote, but he raised the ire of whites in Belzoni in doing so, and he began to receive death threats. In the spring of 1955 a mass rally for voter registration in Mound Bayou, sponsored by the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, drew 10,000 people to hear Congressman Charles Diggs and others, including George Lee. A journalist who was present, Simeon Booker, later recalled that Lee told his audience that if they voted the Delta would one day have a black congressman. On May 7, 1955, about two weeks after the Mound Bayou rally, Lee was dead. The official report claimed he died of a car accident, but evidence pointed to a Klan killing. An autopsy revealed that Lee had lead pellets in his face that were consistent with buckshot, and witnesses at the scene reported hearing shots.

When news circulated that shotgun pellets were also found in the tires of the car, Sheriff Shelton spread the rumor that Rev. Lee had been having an extra-marital affair and was killed by a romantic rival.

Legal Status:
Civil rights activists searched the Delta looking for evidence to find the killers, and the FBI opened an investigation. Medgar Evers, as someone later reported, "cut his teeth" on the Lee case. Despite the persistence of Evers and many others, the FBI investigation ran out of steam and no charges were ever brought. Sheriff Shelton closed his file and claimed that Lee was fatally injured in a traffic accident. When doctors pointed out the lead pellets pulled from Lee’s head and face, Shelton retorted that they were probably dental fillings. The doctors responded that dentists did not use lead for fillings, but Shelton refused to investigate. A coroner’s jury concluded that Lee died of unknown causes.

Resources:
The Grim and Overlooked Anniversary of the Murder of the Rev. George W. Lee, Civil Rights Activist, History News Network (George Mason University), May 6, 2005.

Keith Beauchamp, producer, Murder in Black and White: George Lee, Television Series.

Background:
Lamar Smith, a 63 year old farmer and World War II veteran was a voting rights activist and a member of the Regional Counsel of Negro Leadership. On August 2 he had voted in the primary and helped get others out to vote. There was a run-off primary scheduled for August 23, and , on August 13, Smith was at the courthouse seeking to assist black voters to fill out absentee ballots so they could vote in the run-off election. He was shot to death in the front of the courthouse in Brookhaven, Lincoln County, at about 10 am.

Legal Status:
Three men were arrested in connection with the Smith murder. On September 13, 1955 an all white Brookhaven grand jury failed to return any indictments. The District Attorney reported that the Sheriff, Carnie E. Smith, refused to make an immediate arrest “although he knew everything I know.” The District Attorney further reported that the sheriff told him he saw Noah Smith, one of the accused, “leave the scene with blood all over him. It was his duty to take that man into custody regardless of who he was, but he did not do it.”

Resources:
M is for Mississippi and Murder, pamphlet prepared for the NAACP, November 1955, (Mississippi Digital Library, University of Southern Mississippi).

NAACP Advertisement, New York Times, October 3, 1955.

Michal R. Belknap, Federal Law and Southern Order, 32 (1987).

Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 39, 41 (1995).

Keith Beauchamp, producer,Murder in Black & White: Lamar Smith, Television Series.

Background:
Emmett Till was kidnapped and killed on August 28, 1955. The facts of this murder are widely known.

Legal Status:
Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were charged with the murder and tried in September 1955. Black men and white women were excluded from jury duty at the time. Emmett Till’s great-uncle, Moses Wright identified the accused as the men who kidnapped his nephew. Milam and Bryant were acquitted of the murder by a jury of twelve white men after they deliberated for about an hour. The acquittal is considered one of the greatest failures of the justice system in American history. After their acquittal on murder charges, a grand jury considered whether to indict Bryant and Milam on kidnapping charges. No indictment was returned and the men went free. On January 25, 1965, Look magazine interviewed Milam and Bryant, and Milam admitted that he and Bryant were responsible for Till’s death.

In 2004, the Justice Department opened an investigation into the Till matter. The Department turned the investigation over to Joyce Chiles, the Leflore County District Attorney. Chiles is African-American. A grand jury declined to indict Bryant’s wife. The case is now inactive.

Resources:

Local Activist Wants Notorious Civil Rights Case Reopened, KSHB-TV article, May 4, 2010.

Fear lingers for some years after civil rights era, Washington Post article, April 24, 2010.

http://emmetttilllegacyfoundation.com/Home_Page.html

Stanley Nelson, producer, The Murder of Emmett Till, PBS movie.

Keith A. Beauchamp, producer, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, movie.

Justice Department Will Investigate Emmett Till Case, Civilrights.org, May 11, 2004.

FBI Files

Background:
Clinton Melton lived in Glendora, Mississippi. Married to Beulah Melton, the couple had four children. Melton worked as a service station attendant in Glendora. Shortly after the Emmett Till murder threw the national spotlight on Mississippi, Melton was himself shot and killed.

On December 3, 1955, Elmer Otis Kimball, a cotton gin operator, asked Melton to fill his car up with gas. Kimball became enraged because of something having to do with this transaction, and he threatened to come back to the gas station and kill Melton. Kimball was driving the automobile of J. W. Milam, one of the men who had been acquitted of killing Emmett Till in August of 1955. Kimball did in fact return to the station with a shotgun. With no provocation, he shot and killed Melton in full view of the gas station owner and other witnesses.

Several white witnesses deemed the incident to be murder, and an indictment was returned against Kimball. Beulah Melton asked Medgar Evers not to involve the NAACP because, in the wake of the Till case, she feared that justice would be harder to achieve with the organization’s involvement. David Halberstam had remained working as a journalist in Mississippi after the Till case, and he covered the trial of Elmer Kimball.

Legal Status:
The Kimball trial was held in the same courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi where Till’s killers had been tried earlier in 1955. In Kimball’s case, having learned of the power of the press from the Till matter, the court prohibited cameras in the courtroom.

Kimball was charged with murder. The defense theory was self-defense. There were three state witnesses - Lee McGarrh, the filling station owner and Melton’s white boss, who testified that Melton did not have a gun and did not provoke the attack; John Henry Wilson, a black man who testified that Kimball said he was going to kill Melton and would kill Wilson too if he got in the way; and another man who was ten feet away from the incident and testified he did not see a gun in Melton’s hand.

Witnesses for the defense – none of them eyewitnesses – included the sheriff, deputy sheriff, and chief of police. Kimball, the defendant, claimed Melton cursed at him during the argument. He claimed he had a scar from a bullet wound that came from a gun shot by Melton, and he produced a doctor who claimed it was indeed a gunshot wound. An all white jury acquitted Kimball after deliberating for four hours.

BEULAH MELTON

In March 1956, just before the Kimball trial was scheduled to commence, Beulah Melton, Clinton’s wife, died in a car accident. She drowned after her car ran off the road into the bayou near Glendora. Clinton’s two small children, who were passengers in the car, were saved by a relative driving by the scene.

Resources:

Susan Klopfer, Where Rebels Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, 280 (2005).

Davis W. Houck and Matthew A. Grindy, Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press (2008).

Use Milam Car in New Mississippi Slaying, Chicago Defender, December 17, 1955.

Seek Atonement for Latest Mississippi Outrage, Chicago Defender, December 24, 1955.

Family in Mississippi Gets Aid, Pittsburgh Courier, December 24, 1955.

Widow Drowns As Trial of Mate’s Slayer Opens, Chicago Defender, March 17, 1956.

Tallahatchie County Acquits a Peckerwood, The Reporter, April 19, 1956. .

Background:
Daniels, 37 years old, was arrested and detained by Yalobusha County sheriff J.G. “Buster” Treloar on charges of reckless driving, drunkenness and possession of whiskey. While incarcerated, he was repeatedly assaulted by Sheriff Treloar. After his wife bailed Daniels out, he was sent to a Memphis hospital where, on July 1, he died of a stroke. An autopsy reported he had suffered severe head injuries. Two white witnesses who were at the jail reported that Sheriff Treloar beat Daniels. The Sheriff did not deny he hit Daniels, but said he did not hit him on the head. He hit him because he refused to go to the “Negro cells.” When he did not leave the white cells, Treloar claims he hit him with his slapstick on the “seat of his pants, and told him to go to the [Negro] cell.” After the trial and acquittal of Treloar, Annie Margaret Daniels left Mississippi. “I’m hurt and I’m scared” she said. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to pay Wilson’s medical and funeral expenses and take care of our five children.”

Legal Status:
Sheriff Buster Treloar was tried for manslaughter before Judge Curtis Swango, who had presided at the Emmett Till trial in 1955. The trial of Treloar took place before an all white male jury in a courtroom built in 1913, with Negroes sitting in the balcony and whites in the courtroom proper. Whites filled the courtroom. Two witnesses identified Treloar as the man who beat Daniels. The jury deliberated 28 minutes before acquitting Treloar.

Resources:
MSSC, doc. 5-2-0-2; 98-4-1-65.

Two Accuse Sheriff of Beating Fatality, Washington Post & Times Herald, July 7, 1958.

Background:
Accused of the rape and kidnap of a white woman, Mack Charles Parker was abducted from the jail where he was being detained in Pearl River County by a lynch mob led by J.P. Walker, a former deputy sheriff. Parker was shot and thrown into the Pearl River three days before his trial was scheduled to begin. The jailer, Jewel Alford, facilitated the mob’s access to Parker.

Legal Status:
Parker was represented by R. Jess Brown, a black attorney who challenged exclusion of blacks from the indicting grand jury, the lack of blacks in the petit jury venire on account of their exclusion from the voting roles, and requested a change of venue. Some suggest that racial anxieties were intensified among whites in the county at the prospect of Brown cross-examining the victim of the rape.

The FBI conducted a thorough investigation of the case after Parker’s body was discovered. A local prosecutor disregarded the results of the FBI investigation. The coroner’s jury concluded that “death occurred at the hands of a person or persons unknown.” The United States Attorney General William Rogers called the result “as flagrant and calculated a miscarriage of justice as I know of.” The Justice Department pursued criminal indictments under 18 USC 241 and 242. The federal grand jury, which received incorrect instructions from Judge Sidney Mize, refused to return indictments.

The case has not been reopened.

Resources:
Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown, 434-443 (2002).

Howard Smead, Blood Justice: The Lynching of Mack Charles Parker (1988).

FBI Files

Background:
Jonas Causey, 70 years old, was shot and killed in his home by a large group of Coahoma County law enforcement officers on the plantation where he had lived with his wife for many years. Earlier in the day Causey had shot two white men, killing one and wounding another one. Causey suffered from mental illness and had been a patient at Whitfield State Hospital. Aaron Henry investigated and sought federal review of the killing. Causey’s widow, Elnora provided Henry with an affidavit detailing Causey’s shooting of the two white men. She stated the men threatened and harassed the Causeys all night long and then began firing on their house. Causey shot back and killed one of the men. The other reported the shooting to the Clarksdale police department. The Sheriff and about ten police officers and deputies went to the Causey home. The officers fired tear gas shells into the home, causing Elnora Causey to come out. Mrs. Causey told the officers her husband was mentally ill. Jonas Causey yelled at the officers “I can’t come out. I’m scared.” Failing to drive him from the house, the officers shot into the house and mortally wounded Causey. Sheriff Leighton Miller was quoted as saying “we did a lot of yelling for him to come out but he wouldn’t and finally we just all shot in there and killed him.”

Legal Status:
The NAACP requested a federal investigation of the Causey case. No results were ever made public. The state conducted no investigation.

Resources:
MSSC docs. 2-9-0-62; 98-3-0-325.

Background:
Samuel O’Quinn was a successful businessman and father of 11 children in Centreville, Wilkinson County. A graduate of Tuskegee Institute, he owned a large plantation, worked as assistant town engineer, and was engaged in several other business endeavors around Southwest Mississippi. In 1959 O’Quinn left the state to travel North. He was shot to death shortly after he returned. Local black residents stated that O’Quinn was murdered because he had joined the NAACP and was preparing to engage in civil rights activity in Wilkinson. The local sheriff told investigators for the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission that the murder of Sam O'Quinn had shut down NAACP activity in the County.

Legal Status:
No legal action was ever taken in connection with O’Quinn’s murder.

Resources:
Ann Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi, 187 (1968; New York 1976).

Ben Greenberg, The Legacy of a Murder, Hungry Blues web log, 3/02/2008.

Sheriff Falkenheimer Comments Regarding O' Quinn

New Articles Regarding O'Qinn Murder

Background:
Booker T. Mixon was born in 1934 in Itta Bena. A war veteran, Mixon, his wife Earlene, and their two children moved from Chicago in 1959, where they lived after the war, to Clarksdale, Mississippi. After the family moved, Mixon worked hauling dirt and gravel for about 3 months for J.A. Childs of Greenwood, a white man. He then worked in Crenshaw driving a truck for about 3 days before he was found dead. Mixon was 35 years old at the time of his death.

On October 12, 1959, Mixon was discovered naked lying in near fatal condition on the side of the road in Marks, Mississippi. Sheriff’s Deputy Ben Collins of Quitman County found Mixon and called his case a “hit and run.” Mixon remained in a coma from October 12 to 23, when he died. The flesh on Mixon’s abdomen and back had been torn from his body; witnesses said it appeared as though he had been dragged by a car. Dr. Joseph Jones Jr., a black physician and surgeon from Clarksdale, reported that “[Mixon] had multiple abrasions and bruises on his face, head, abdomen, and legs… Furthermore, there were brain injuries and head fractures. I would say he could have been dragged by a car, perhaps, over some grass.”

Family members hired Memphis Attorney J.F. Estes to investigate the death. Estes requested of Governor Coleman a full scale investigation. However, the attorney could obtain neither an autopsy nor a coroners’ inquest. The death was written off as an automobile accident.

Aaron Henry was deeply suspicious of Mixon’s death. It was troubling, he observed, that Mixon was found completely nude, and that the family could not get a straight answer as to who transported Mixon to the hospital. There were two funeral companies in the area, one white and one black, neither of which was responsible for transporting Mixon’s body.

Legal Status:
No charges were ever brought in the Mixon matter.

Resources:
Victim Dragged Behind Car, Dies, Chicago Defender, October 31, 1959.

Believe Miss. Death was ‘Lynching,’ Pittsburgh Courier, November 21, 1959.

MSSC docs. 10-70-0-2; 10-70-0-4; 10-70-0-5.

Background:
Luther Jackson, a 27 year old Korean War veteran, was shot to death by Philadelphia police officer Lawrence Rainey, later accused of the murder of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman. Jackson, formerly a native of Mississippi, had been living in Chicago and Flint. According to a friend, Hattie Thompson who was with him, Jackson and she were sitting in a car when Officer Rainey approached. Rainey pulled Jackson out of the car and shot him twice. Jackson died in a ditch. Francis Culbertson witnessed the murder. Culbertson demanded to know why the sheriff allowed Rainey to kill Jackson. Culbertson fled town after making these inquiries. Hattie Thompson was arrested and fined $25 for disorderly conduct.

Legal Status:
A coroner’s jury was convened. It rendered a verdict of "justifiable homicide." The Justice Department declined to get involved, although Medgar Evers sought an investigation. The Justice Department concluded that Rainey had not violated any federal statute and therefore there was “no basis for action by this department.”

Resources:
John Dittmer, Local People, 79 (1995).

Florence Mars, Witness in Philadelphia, 77. (1989)

Medgar Evers to William Rogers, October 29, 1959, NAACP papers.

Two More Join List of Miss. Victims, Pittsburgh Courier, November 7, 1959. MSSC doc. 10-70-0-4.

Background:
Prather, 15 years old, was killed in Alcorn County in an anti-black Halloween prank by eight youths.

Legal Status:
Myrlie Evers recalls that one suspect was indicted but not convicted on manslaughter charges.

Resources:
Myrlie Evers, For Us the Living, 204 (1967).

Background:
Louis Stapleton, 42, resided in Chicago. Visiting Clarksdale for a funeral, he was arrested and charged with drunk driving and possession of a weapon, a fountain-pen type pistol. Sentenced to thirty days in the county jail, he was assigned to work on a road gang. On August 2 he got sick and was beaten and forced to work by Pat Williams, the overseer of the gang. Williams was employed by the County Board of Supervisors which operated the road gang on behalf of the County. On August 5 Stapleton was beaten a second time after falling ill. This time he could not stand up and remained unconscious in the ditch where he had been working for over an hour. He succumbed to his injuries when he was returned to the jail. Pictures of Stapleton’s body became public in Chicago when he was returned there for burial. The beatings were severe enough to leave marks across his back and pull the flesh off his buttocks.

Shortly before Stapleton’s death, Aaron Henry complained that anyone with an “Illinois, New York or a Michigan license plate is an invitation to insult by the highway patrol” in Coahoma County.

Legal Status:
A coroner’s jury was convened by Sheriff L.A. Ross to determine the cause of death. The jury could not decide whether death was caused by the beating or was from heat exhaustion. A Coahoma County grand jury may have taken evidence in the case. Pat Williams was fired by the Board of Supervisors. He was never charged with any crime.

Resources:
MSSC doc. 2-62-1-13.
MSSC doc. 2-9-9-0-126 (Aaron Henry).

Background:
Herbert Lee was a 42 year old a dairy farmer and father of nine children in Amite County. He had been a member of the NAACP since the early 1950s. When SNCC voting rights activists started working in Amite and Pike counties in the fall of 1961, Lee, a close friend of the Amite County NAACP branch chairman E.W. Steptoe, became involved, helping to transport the workers and orient them to the locale. In mid-September, Assistant United States Attorney John Doar and others from the Justice Department interviewed several persons in Amite County about infringements of the voting laws. They learned that one E.H. Hurst, a member of the Mississippi state legislature, had been threatening to harm activists in Amite, including Herbert Lee.

On the morning of September 25, E.H. Hurst ran into Herbert Lee at a cotton gin. Lee, who grew up with Hurst, was arriving while Hurst was departing. Hurst cornered Lee on the side of Lee’s pickup truck and shot him dead in front of about a dozen witnesses. Lee’s body remained next to his truck while the sheriff quickly organized a coroner’s jury. Several black witnesses, including Louis Allen, fearing for their own lives, lied to the coroner’s jury and testified that Lee, a small man, threatened Hurst, who stood 6 feet 3 and weighed about 200 pounds, with a tire iron. On the day Lee was slain, the coroner’s jury concluded Hurst shot in self-defense.

Legal Status:
After the coroner’s jury ruled the homicide justifiable, there were no further legal proceedings in the Lee murder. However, one witness, Louis Allen, later told FBI investigators that he had been forced to lie to the coroner’s jury. Allen endured beatings and harassment immediately after he came forward to the FBI and, on January 31, 1964, he too was killed in Amite County. There have been no arrests in the Allen murder.

Resources:
Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 121-124 (2005).

Background:
Corp. Roman Duckworth, Jr. US Army, was killed in Taylorsville, Smith County. He was traveling on an interstate bus from Camp Ritchie, Md, to visit his wife who was ill in a hospital in Laurel, Ms. According to witnesses on the bus “he insisted on his right to sit where he chose on an interstate bus.” Police officer Bill Kelly, claiming that Duckworth, who was unarmed, was drunk and belligerent, shot the young soldier.

Legal Status:
No charges were brought against Kelly.

Resources:
Raymond Arsenault, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, 479 (2006).

Christopher Waldrep and Michael Bellesiles, ed., Documenting American Violence: A Sourcebook, 346 (2006) (quoting testimony of Aaron Henry before the House Judiciary Committee, 1963).

Background:
Paul Guihard, 30, a French newspaperman representing Agence France-Press, was shot and killed while he was covering the riots in Oxford on September 30, 1962. He was shot in the back by an unknown assailant.

Legal Status:
A federal investigation failed to identify a perpetrator and the Guihard case was closed.

Resources:
Nick Bryant, The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality, 349 (2006).

Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963, 668-69 (1988).

Background:
The first Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP office in Jackson, MS, Medgar Evers investigated many of the cases on this list, including Mack Charles Parker, Emmett Till, Roman Duckworth and Clyde Kennard. He was one of the most important civil rights leaders in the state and was widely known across the country.

Shortly after midnight on June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers was shot while stepping out of his car after returning from work. The bullet passed through Evers, into his house and through a wall in the kitchen, bouncing off the refrigerator and landing on a cabinet. At the time of his death, Evers was carrying a handful of sweatshirts bearing the slogan “Jim Crow Must Go.” Evers was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with an attending crowd of thirty thousand people. He was at the time the highest-ranking civil rights leader to be assassinated.

Legal Status:
Ten days after Evers’ assassination, Byron “Delay” de la Beckwith reported to the police upon learning that FBI agents were searching for him in connection to the murder. The Washington FBI Office had matched a fingerprint on the eyesight of a rifle found outside the Evers’ home to Beckwith’s military records. Beckwith was charged with the murder.

Beckwith’s trial, before an all-white jury, began on January 27, 1964. On the last day of the trial, Governor Ross Barnett shook Beckwith’s hand and conversed with him. The first jury deadlocked, seven for acquittal and five for conviction, and a second trial is held. The second jury also deadlocked, this time eight are for acquittal and four for conviction. The case was dismissed and Beckwith returned home to a community-wide celebration.

The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission documents, obtained by Myrlie Evers and Jerry Mitchell in 1989, included notes indicating that Beckwith’s lawyers asked the Sovereignty Commission to look into the backgrounds of the potential jurors for the second trial in 1964. The documents revealed that a man who was “believed to be Jewish,” according to the notes, was not chosen for the jury, while two who the investigator said were “fair and impartial” were chosen.

Assistant State Attorney General Bobby DeLaughter led a new investigation into the murder. DeLaughter collected old evidence and rounded up witnesses from the previous trials. To the former case, he added accounts of Beckwith’s confessions over the years, including an account in Delmar Dennis’ Klandestine which reported that Beckwith bragged that “killing that nigger gave me no more inner discomfort than our wives endure when they give birth to our children.” DeLaughter’s efforts were aided by ABC reporters who located four persons who claimed to have seen Beckwith in Jackson on the night of Evers’ murder but who had not spoken up before.

In December 1990, Beckwith was reindicted for the murder of Medgar Evers. His trial began January 18, 1994 with a jury selected from Panola County, 140 miles from Jackson where the trial would be heard. On February 5, 1994, more than 30 years after the assassination, the jury returned a verdict of guilty and Beckwith was sentenced to life in jail.

Resources:
Myrlie Evers, The Autobiography of Medgar Evers: A Hero’s Life and Legacy Revealed Through His Writings, Letters, and Speeches (2005).

Myrlie Evers, For Us, the Living (1967).

Maryann Vollers, Ghosts of Mississippi (1995).

Adam Nossiter, Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers (1994).

Bobby DeLaughter, Never Too Late: A Prosecutor’s Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case (2001).

The Legacy of Medgar Evars, NPR All Things Considered, June 10, 2003.

Rob Reiner, director, Ghosts of Mississippi, film, 1996.

For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story, made for TV movie.

FBI Files

NAACP biography

Background:
Clyde Kennard was twice falsely accused and convicted, once on traffic violations and a second time on a burglary charge, to prevent him from his persistent efforts to attend the segregated University of Southern Mississippi. The burglary charge was based on the alleged theft of a $25 bag of feed from the Forrest County Cooperative warehouse. On the basis of the testimony of Johnny Lee Roberts, an alleged accomplice, Kennard was convicted and sentenced to seven years at Parchman Penitentiary. A campaign was launched to win Kennard’s freedom. He became ill from colon cancer in 1961. In 1963, Governor Ross Barnett indefinitely suspended Kennard’s sentence. He moved to Chicago where he underwent surgery. He passed away on July 4, 1963.

Legal Status:
Records of the Sovereignty Commission established that the Commission conspired to frame Kennard. Clarion-Ledger reporter Jerry Mitchell interviewed Johnnie Lee Roberts, who recanted the testimony he gave in the 1960 burglary case. Governor Haley Barbour declined to grant Kennard a posthumous pardon. On May 17, 2006, Forrest County Circuit Court Judge Robert Helfrich exonerated Kennard of the 1960 conviction.

Resources:
Mississippi Legislature Resolution Honoring Clyde Kennard

Kennard v. State, 127 So. 2d 848 (Miss. 1961) (reversing traffic convictions).

Kennard v. State,128 So. 2d 572, 576 (Miss. 1961)(affirming burglary conviction)

Mississippi Southern College Rejects Clyde Kennard

Kennard Exoneration Petition

Judge Robert Helfrich Opinion on Kennard Exoneration

Background:
Aaron Henry reported that Ernest Jells, a Clarksdale youth, was shot at by a number of police officers and killed as he ran from a merchant who accused him of stealing a banana. The incident took place shortly after Clarksdale parents filed a desegregation petition with the local school board.

Legal Status:
No charges were brought against the police.

Resources:

Civil Rights-Era Cold Case Initiative: Seeking Victims’ Next of Kin

Background:
Louis Allen, born and raised in Amite County, logged timber for a living. On Sept. 30, 1961, he witnessed the killing of Herbert Lee in Liberty by E.H. Hurst, a state representative. Although he first gave a false statement that supported Hurst’s claim that he acted in self-defense, he later gave a different statement to FBI investigators.

After his FBI statement, Allen was subjected to severe harassment. Local merchants refused to extend credit and he received death threats. SNCC’s Robert Moses complained to the Department of Justice about the threats against Allen. On June 30, 1962, Allen was arrested and had his jaw broken by law enforcement officers. In November 1962 Allen was again arrested on questionable charges. He was warned to leave the county but before he could do so, on January 31, 1964, he was gunned down in front of his property.

Legal Status:
No criminal charges have been brought in the Allen case.

Resources:
FBI Files

Background:
Clifton Walker was killed in Natchez on or about February 28, 1964. Walker worked as a day laborer at the International Paper Company. He had worked there since 1950. He lived in Woodville in Wilkinson County. He was married with children. On February 28, 1964, Walker worked a regular shift but never returned home. The next day he was found dead in his car in Wilkinson County. He had been shot in the back.

Legal Status:
Sheriff Charles Netterville of Wilkinson County claimed to have investigated. No report was made public and no one was ever arrested for the crime.

Resources:
United States Commission on Civil Rights, Staff Report of Investigation of Incidents of Racial Violence, Adams County, Miss., September 1963 – January 1965 (citing Department of Justice files) 105, 465.

Background:
Silas Caston, 20 years old, was shot and killed by Hinds County Deputy Sheriff Herbert Sullivan in Jackson. The deputy claimed Caston was coming after him.

Legal Status:
No action was taken against Deputy Sullivan by the authorities. CORE and NAACP filed a civil suit against Sullivan.

Resources:
FBI Gets Mississippi Murder List, Chicago Defender, July 16, 1964.

MSSC docs. 9-31-1-18; 2-72-2-71.

Background:
Moore and Dee were 19 years old when, on May 2, 1964, members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan kidnapped and murdered them in Franklin County, believing the two might have information about gun-running in the county. The men were kidnapped from the main street in Meadville and taken to the Homochitto National Forest where they were tied to a tree and beaten. The Klansmen placed Dee and Moore in a trunk of a car and transported them to Tallulah, LA, where they dumped them, while they were still alive, into the Old Mississippi River. Their disarticulated bodies were discovered by a fisherman in July 1964.

Legal Status:
In November 1964, two reputed Klansmen, James Seale and Marcus Edwards, were arrested and charged in connection with the kidnap/murder, but the prosecutor moved to drop the charges in January 1965. In 2005, US Attorney Dunn Lampton responded to a request made by Thomas Moore, brother of Charles, to investigate the matter. In 2007, James Seale was convicted and sentenced to life on one kidnapping charge. On September 9, 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reversed Seale’s conviction. The panel decision is on appeal to the full bench.

In August 2008, the families of Charles Moore and Henry Dee filed a federal civil suit a against Franklin County, in the Southern District of Mississippi. The families are represented by CRRJ. The suit alleges that collusion between Franklin County law enforcement officers and the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan contributed to Moore and Dee’s kidnap and murder.

Background:
James Chaney, 21, Michael Schwerner, 24, and Andrew Goodman 20 disappeared from Neshoba County at 10 pm on Sunday, June 21, 1964. Earlier in the day the men had gone to investigate a church burning. Neshoba County officers arrested and detained the men. They were released by the Sheriff, waylaid by members of the Ku Klux Klan, including law enforcement, and shot on the road. Their burned out car was later found in Bogue Chitto swamp, and, five weeks later and after a massive search, the bodies of the men were found buried 15 feet down.

Legal Status:
Circumstantial evidence established a conspiracy between Neshoba County law enforcement officials and the Ku Klux Klan. On February 27, 1967, the FBI arrested 18 members of the White Nights of the KKK on a federal conspiracy indictment pursuant to 18 USC 241. Following a two-week trial in Meridian, led by Assistant United States Attorney John Doar, a jury produced seven guilty verdicts and sentences ranging from three to ten years were imposed. None of the convicted men served more than six years. The all-white jury acquitted eight of the defendants and three ended in mistrials.

In January 6, 2005 Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood charged Klan member and preacher Edgar Ray Killen with the murders. The 1967 trial of Killen had ended in a hung jury. Killen was found guilty on three counts of manslaughter on June 20, 2005 and a sixty year sentence was imposed.

Resources:
FBI Files

Speech by Ben Chaney to American Bar Association, 1999

Timeline of the murder

US v. Price, 383 U.S. 787 (1966).

Killen v. State of Mississippi, 958 So.2d 172 (2007).

The Mississippi Burning Trial

Posey v. United States,416 F.2d 545 (5th Cir. 1969).

Background:
Neimiah (aka Nehemiah) Montgomery, 60, was shot to death by Bolivar County law enforcement officers over a dispute with a gas station attendant about payment for the gasoline. He was shot by City Marshal L.L. Yarbrough. A television station in Seattle broadcast news of the incident as reported to them by Freedom Summer student Denis Flanigan. On learning of the news report in Seattle, the Sovereignty Commission made inquiries of Bolivar County authorities. Erle Johnston, director of the Sovereignty Commission reported to the Department of Public Safety that the Flanigan report on the Montgomery shooting was false. He wrote:

I believe the student was referring to the slaying of a berserk Negro named Nehemiah Montgomery by City Marshall L.L. Yarbrough. This occurred around August 10, 1964. The Negro had refused to pay for gasoline after ordering it, knocked the service station attendant down, and threatened a woman with an axe handle. An integrated Coroner’s Jury ruled the marshal fired in self-defense after he was struck with the axe handle.

Legal Status:
A coroner’s jury ruled the shooting a justifiable homicide.

Resources:
Mississippi Summer Project, Running Summary of Incidents, 8/10/64

MSSC docs. 99-34-0-11; 99-134-0-15; 99-134-0-17; 99-134-0-18.

Background:
Hubert Orsby (aka Herbert Oarsby), a young man, was found in the Black River near Highway 51 in Canton. Reports state he liked to wear a CORE tee shirt. Violent attacks connected with civil rights were prevalent in the Canton area at the time. On September 1, a youth was said to have been forced at gunpoint into a pickup truck driven by a white man. On September 10, two grocery stores in the black community were dynamited, and on the evening of September 10, 8 people were arrested at a downtown hotel.

Legal Status:
A coroner’s jury ruled Orsby’s death an accidental drowning.

Resources:
Mississippi Eyewitness: The Three Civil Rights Workers – How they were Murdered, Ramparts Magazine, 1964.

Death of Teen in Miss. Is Called an Accident, Chicago Defender, September 12, 1964.

MSSC docs.10-60-0-30; 2-141-0-19

Background:
Willie Henry Lee of Goshen Springs, 24 years old, was apparently found dead in his car. The car looked like one driven by a COFO staff worker. It was located a day after the death in Jackson.

Legal Status:
There does not appear to have been any investigation or prosecution.

Resources:
SNCC newsletter, The Student Voice, March 5, 1965 p. 2 - MSSC doc. 99-28-0-42.

Background:
Donald Rasberry was shot to death by his plantation boss.

Legal Status:
It appears no legal action was taken in connection with Rasberry’s murder.

Resources:
CORE New Orleans Partial List of Racial Murders 1963-64

MSSC doc 2-141-0-19

Background:
Robert McNair, a father of six children, lived in Rankin County. On November 6, 1965, McNair was shot and killed by Constable Luther Stevenson in Pelahatchie in Rankin County. Constable Stevenson claimed he was serving McNair with a justice of the peace warrant when McNair lunged at him with an open pocketknife. Constable Stevenson claimed that he fired the fatal shots in self-defense. What was not known at the time of the shooting was that Luther Stevenson was an informant for the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission.

In late 1965, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) in Rankin County was actively seeking to get black representatives elected to the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS). Restrictive registration requirements and intense harassment kept blacks from voting in these elections election.

Lawrence Guyot, MFDP Chairman asked the Department of Justice to investigate the McNair shooting, and although the FBI appears to have initiated a review of the incident, no investigative results ever came to public light. Observers remarked that many community residents appeared to take the McNair killing as a warning against participation in the ASCS process.

Legal Status:
There do not appear to have been any arrests in connection with this shooting death.

Resources:
Negro Father of 6 is Slain: FDP Asks Feds Investigate, Clarion Ledger, November 8, 1965.

MSSC docs. 2-37-1-40; 10-71-0-15; 2-165-5-10.

Background:
Lillie Dell Power (aka “Lillie Bell Powers”) was killed by a police bullet in Starkville. She died from the wound on November 10, 1965. Lillie was 14 years old when she died.

At the time of Lillie’s death, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was organizing voter drives in the area. The Starkville Community was very active in the campaign, collecting money for the vote drive at businesses in the black community and holding rallies at three churches in the areas, among other tactics.

According to a December 1965 MFDP Newsletter, Lillie was one of several black youths in a car. The police took after the car, and when they got outside of the city limits, they shot into the car, hitting and killing Lillie.

Legal Status:
It does not appear that there was any significant law enforcement investigation of the shooting death of this fourteen year old.

Resources:
Susan Klopfer, Where Rebels Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited (2005).

MSSC docs. 2-165-5-16; 2-165-5-51.

Background:
Vernon Dahmer was born on March 10, 1908 and murdered in January 1966 in Hattiesburg. Dahmer had lived in Forrest County all his life. A successful businessman, he owned a store, a sawmill, a planning mill, and a 300-acre commercial cotton farm. He also served several terms as president of the Forrest County Chapter of the NAACP.

On January 9, 1966, Dahmer led a voter registration drive. A local radio station announced that Dahmer would allow black prospective voters to pay the two dollar poll tax at his store. At about 2 am on the morning of January 10, 1966, Dahmer’s home was firebombed in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Two or three carloads of White Knights Klansmen pushed their way into the Dahmer home and ignited 12 one-gallon containers of gasoline. While the house and adjacent store were on fire, shots were fired at the home by the Klansmen. Dahmer returned fire from a window in the house in order to hold off the Klansmen while Dahmer’s wife, Ellie, and their small children, all in the home during the attack, escaped from a rear window. His family survived the attack but Vernon Dahmer did not. He died as a result of his burns the next day. The Dahmers’ home, store and car were all destroyed.

Legal Status:
An agent of the FBI agent in Meridian quickly opened an investigation in concert with local authorities. Nearly 20 FBI agents began canvassing the area. They interviewed local Klansmen and Klan informants and gathered 120 pieces of evidence—including tire tracks and shell casings—that were analyzed by the FBI Lab in Washington. FBI agents soon identified a number of suspects and compiled a 1,100 page report outlining the case. On March 27, a complaint was filed against fourteen men. Thirteen were arrested by the next day. Sam Bowers turned himself in several days later. Thirteen suspected Klansmen were brought to trial, eight on charges of arson and murder. Four of those involved in the murder were found guilty and sentenced under federal law and another entered a guilty plea. Three were sentenced to life terms, each serving less than 10 years. Another man sentenced to 10 years for arson served two. Eleven of the defendants were also tried on federal charges of conspiracy to intimidate Dahmer because of his civil rights activities. Bowers, believed to have ordered the murder, was not convicted in connection with Mr. Dahmer’s death, but served six years in prison for his role in the 1964 killing of civil-rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner (“The Mississippi Burning” case). Bowers was tried four times in connection with the Dahmer murder; these cases ended in mistrials. At the Dahmers’ prompting, Forrest County District Attorney Lindsay Carter reopened an investigation into the murder in 1998. State and federal authorities obtained new evidence that indicated there had been jury tampering in Bowers’ earlier trials. Bowers was arrested on May 2, 1998 on the old indictment and the case was tried before a state court jury consisting five black citizens, 6 white citizens, and one Asian citizen.

At the trial in August 1998, Ellie Dahmer and her two children, Bettie and Dennis, testified as to the events of that night. Billy Roy Pitts, a former White Knights Klansmen involved in the Dahmer murder, was the state’s star witness. Having been granted immunity, he testified that Bowers organized, commanded and planned the Dahmer firebombing and murder.

On August 21, 1998, Sam Bowers was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the murder of Vernon Dahmer. He received a mandatory life sentence. He died in prison on November 5, 2006.

Resources:
John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi, 391 (1995).

Discovery Channel, Killed by the Klan: Vernon Dahmer, documentary film 1999.

The Dahmer Collection, University of Southern Mississippi Archives

Background:
Ben Chester White was born on January 5, 1899. He worked most of his life as a caretaker and sharecropper on the Copper Hill Plantation, which was the same plantation where his grandparents had worked as slaves. He was not involved in civil rights; indeed, he was not registered to vote. On June 10, 1966, three Klansmen drove to White's house and asked him to help them find a lost dog. They drove White, then 67 years old, to a remote area in the Homochitto National Forest. According to testimony at their later trials, one of the three, Claude Fuller, took out a rifle and opened fire on White. Just before he died White yelled out, "Oh, Lord, what have I done to deserve this?"

White’s body was dumped near Pretty Creek in the Homochitto National Forest. He had been shot 17 times. The crime shocked those that knew the gentle Adams County handyman - a simple laborer who tried to stay out of trouble.

The FBI appears to have concluded that the real motive behind White’s slaying was to generate a national protest that would attract Dr. Martin Luther King to Natchez, Mississippi where the Klan could then kill him.

Legal Status:
State law enforcement officers investigating a car fire ultimately were led to the car’s owner, James Lloyd Jones, who confessed to the crime, admitting that the car had been torched to destroy evidence. Although Jones later retracted the confession, in 1967 Mississippi tried him and Ernest Avants for the murder based on Jones’ initial testimony. A third suspect, Claude Fuller, did not go to trial. Avants was acquitted and the jury hung on Jones.

Avants, who was acquitted in state court, was, in 2003, indicted on federal charges of aiding and abetting a murder on federal property. The prosecution was under the direction of Brad Pigott, the US attorney for the Southern District in Mississippi. In 2003, Ernest Avants, was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Avants died in 2004 at the age of 72. James Lloyd Jones and Claude Fuller are also dead.

Resources:
http://www.tolerance.org/memorial/memorial.swf

White was an Unlikely Klan Target, Natchez Democrat, December 5, 1999.

Avants indictment:

US v. Avants, 367 F.3d 433 (5th Cir. 2004).

Background:
Wharlest Jackson was murdered in Natchez on February 27, 1967. At the time of his death he was 36 years old and the treasurer of the Natchez Chapter of the NAACP. A native Floridian and combat veteran of the Korean War, Jackson served as treasurer of the Natchez NAACP. He was married to Exerlena Jackson and the couple had 5 children.

Jackson had participated in a protest march in 1965 after his friend and fellow NAACP official, George Metcalfe, was seriously injured when a KKK bomb exploded in his car. Metcalfe survived, but was seriously injured in the explosion.

In February 1967, Jackson accepted a coveted promotion at Armstrong Rubber Company, a tire plant in Natchez that at the time was notorious for its high number of Klan employees. Jackson was targeted because of his promotion to a “white” job, and he began to receive threatening messages at work. On February 27, 1967, Jackson was driving home from work when a bomb exploded in his 1958 Chevrolet truck and killed him instantly. The Natchez Police Department arrived on the scene where they found Jackson's truck blown to bits – the explosion blew out the top of the truck, the front and rear glass, both doors and the hood.

Many in the community were shocked and appalled by the violent murder of Jackson. The Natchez NAACP led large demonstrations. Time magazine reported that Charles Evers led 2,000 demonstrators in a march on the Armstrong plant. Even Governor Paul Johnson, infamously hostile to the NAACP, called Jackson’s murder “an act of savagery which stains the honor of our state.”

Police investigators learned that a handful of men at Armstrong had warned that if Jackson took a “white man's job” he would pay with his life. Investigators speculated that Jackson may have been a victim of the Silver Dollar Group, a violent cell of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The group totaled about 20 and each carried a silver dollar minted in the year he was born as evidence of membership in the cell. Several in the group had experience with explosives. The Silver Dollar Group is believed to have been responsible for the disappearance and murder of at least two other men, and for having planted the bomb in George Metcalfe’s vehicle.

Legal Status:
Probes right after the murder by the FBI, the Natchez Police Department, the Mississippi Highway & Safety Patrol and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms failed to result in any arrests. Mrs. Jackson reports that many years ago, the FBI told her that it had completed its investigation into Wharlest Jackson's murder and was turning its files over the Natchez Police Department. The Franklin/Adams County district attorney, Ronnie Harper and Natchez police chief Willie Huff investigated the case again in 1998, but determined that all of the suspects, all said to be from Concordia Parish in Louisiana, were dead. The FBI reopened an investigation in 2005, but concluded, as had the Natchez Police Department and prosecutor, that anyone connected with the bombing was likely dead. The FBI maintained that many of the police records of the case have been lost or stolen, but retains the remaining records. Wharlest Jackson Jr., the victim’s eldest son, remains unconvinced that those involved are all deceased.

Resources:
Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968, 581 (2007).

Nancy Maclean, Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace, 1. (2006)

Charles Evers Leads March on Armstrong Rubber

Background:
Benjamin Brown, 22 when he died, was a civil rights activist in Jackson. He was active during the freedom rides, participated in voter registration drives, and worked with the Delta Ministry “Freedom Corps” until late 1966. By 1967, Brown had married Margaret Brown, a fellow civil rights worker, and begun working as a truck driver in Jackson. Brown was well known to local authorities for his civil rights activism, having been arrested seven times in Jackson for his participation in various protests and demonstrations.

On May 10, 1967, when city police entered Jackson State College to arrest a student for speeding on campus, a confrontation ensued between a large number of students, police and national guardsmen. The Jackson Police Department, the Mississippi Highway Patrol, and the National Guard were all present on the campus during the disturbances, which lasted almost two days. State Adjutant General Walter Johnson equipped his troops with live ammunition, and so did the city police.

On May 11, 1967, student demonstrations took place on Lynch Street in Jackson, and ultimately city and state officers fired into the crowd. Brown, a bystander, was shot once in the back and a second time in the back of the head, suffering wounds from which he later died, and several others were also seriously injured. Brown died on May 12, the day of his 22nd birthday. Brown’s killing caused a second wave of demonstrations in Jackson. Brown’s funeral drew over 1,000 people.

Legal Status:
Mississippi authorities made no arrests in connection with Brown’s death at the time of the shooting. The Jackson Police Department opened a new investigation, led by deputy police chief Eddie Wilson in 1998. The case was presented to a grand jury in February 2001. No one was charged.

Brown's mother, Ollie Mae Brown, and his widow, Margaret Brown, brought a wrongful death action in federal court against the state and its officers on May 10, 1968. The district court denied the Brown family’s motion to require the state to produce police files on Brown’s death and denied their motion for leave to dismiss the case without prejudice. The family appealed and the Fifth Circuit reversed, and the case was dismissed without prejudice in August of 1970. Ollie Mae Brown and Margaret Brown v. Allen C. Thompson, 430 F.2d 1214 (5th Cir. 1970).

Jackson police reopened the case in 1998, in part in response to the Brown family’s appeal on the 31st anniversary of the killing. In 1999, the Jackson Police Department established a Cold Case Unit to investigate dormant investigations, including Ben Brown’s death. On May 29, 2001, a Hinds County grand jury concluded that Brown's death was the result of actions by former Jackson police captain Buddy Kane and former Mississippi Highway Patrol Officer Lloyd Jones. Jones would later serve 19 years as sheriff of Simpson County. Both men were already deceased. The grand jury concluded that “there is evidence to support a conclusion that Brown was struck by at least two separate shots from shotguns fired by the Jackson police officer and the Mississippi Highway Patrol officer.”

Based on the grand jury report and evidence that became available as a result of fresh investigations, Ollie Mae Brown and Margaret Brown sued the Mississippi Department of Public Safety and the City of Jackson for wrongful death. Plaintiffs alleged that Jones and Kane directed their weapons at certain targets, including Brown.

The case was eventually settled for an undisclosed amount in 2002.

Resources:
Ollie Mae Brown and Margaret Brown v. Allen C. Thompson 430 F.2d 1214 (1970).

Tim Spofford, Lynch Street: The May 1970 Slayings at Jackson State College (1988).

John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi, 413 (1995).

Ollie Mae Brown and Margaret Brown v. Allen C. Thompson,430 F.2d 1214 (1970).

Background:
Rainey Pool, a sharecropper from Midnight in Humphries County, was killed by a group of men who assaulted him, rendering him unconscious, loaded him in a pick-up truck, and threw him in the Sunflower River. The crime took place outside a bar in Louise. The 54 year old Pool, who had one arm, suffered fractured vertebrae and larynx. The pathologist who examined him after the crime testified that he was probably alive when he was thrown in the river. One of the men claimed Pool had his one arm in his truck and he thought he was taking something.

Legal Status:
In 1970 several men were charged in connection with the death of Pool, but on the request of the prosecutor the circuit court granted a nolle proseque in July 1970.

Twenty-eight years later, in 1998, five men were indicted for the murder. One man, Dennis Newton was acquitted by a jury in June 1998 and another, Joe Oliver Watson, pled to manslaughter. In November 1999 Humphreys County district attorney James Powell prosecuted the remaining three men, James “Doc” Caston, Charles Ernie Caston, and Hal Spivey Crimm. They were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to serve 20 years.

Resources:

Caston v. State of Mississippi, 823 So.2d 473 (2002).

Background:
Lillie Belle Allen, 27 years old, was visiting Pennsylvania from South Carolina. She was killed during a period of unrest in York in the summer of 1969. There were no arrests at the time.

Legal Status:
After a fresh investigation, in 2002 two men, Robert Messersmith and Gregory Neff were convicted of killing Allen. Seven other men pled guilty to lesser charges; former York Mayor Charles Robertson was acquitted.

In 2005, the children and sisters of Lillie Belle Allen obtained a settlement of their civil suit against York and several police officers. The settlement called for a memorial to Allen and to Henry Schaad, a white city policeman who was also shot to death at the time of the disturbances.

Resources:
FBI 1969 Investigation

Telling York’s Story, Healing the Pain of Racism, Shaping York’s Story, York Website.

Meeting of riot victims brought hope for racial accord -18/20 iconic images, York Town Square, April 8, 2008.

Sister Tells About Race Riot Murder, Pittsburgh News, October 1, 2002.

$2M settlement reached for ’69 race-riot killing, USA Today, December 6, 2005.

Allen v. City of York, 168 Fed.Appx. 261 (3rd Cir. 2005).

Background:
On March 28, 1968, sixteen year old Larry Payne was the lone victim of the violence that followed Martin Luther King’s sanitation worker’s march. Payne was killed by a shotgun blast fired by patrolmen as he emerged from a basement in a housing development. King had planned to visit Payne’s mother after his death, but he was killed.

Legal Status:
It is uncertain whether legal action will be taken on this case.

Resources:
Mother grieves son’s death, overshadowed by King slaying, Memphis Commercial Appeal, March 28, 2008.

Eric Arnesan, Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History, 878 (2006).

Background:
John Earl Reese, 16, was murdered while in a cafe with his cousins Joyce Nelson, 13, and her sister Johnnie, 15. The murder took place in Gregg County, East Texas.

This murder occurred in the wake of the May 31, 1955 decision in Brown v. Board of Education II and soon after Emmett Till was lynched on August 28, 1955. At the time, Gregg County had a population that was three-fourths white and one-forth black. Whites terrorized black people to discourage them from attending formerly all white schools. In the summer of 1955, Kilgore Junior College (KJC) was the first junior college in Texas under a federal court order to desegregate. KJC became one of the last schools actually to do so.

A series of shootings at all black schools took place before Mr. Reese was killed. These shootings received barely any mention in the news. Similarly, the death of Mr. Reese did not get very much attention.

Two white men, Joe Simpson, 21, and Perry Dean Ross, 22, drove by the Hughes Cafe with the intent to “make a raid” because, they claimed, they were frustrated with “uppity blacks.” Ross’s lawyer later explained in court that Ross, “wanted to scare somebody and keep the n---rs and the whites from going to school together."

Ross aimed a .22 caliber rifle out of the window of the car, firing several rounds. Ross confessed, "I held the steering wheel with my left hand and laid the gun across the left door. I was going about 85 miles per hour at the time and I fired nine shots into the cafe." Both of the girls, Joyce and Johnnie Nelson, were shot and wounded. Mr. Reese was killed. District Attorney Ralph Prince of Longview described the murder as “a case of two irresponsible boys attempting to have some fun by scaring N----rs.”

Joyce Nelson, one of the victims, recently told CRRJ, “We were children, doing nothing wrong.”

Legal Status:
Local authorities were indifferent to the murder. It was not until months after the shootings that Captain Bob Crowder of the Texas Rangers opened the case. Both men confessed to the shooting. Simpson and Ross told police they had tied the gun to a log and tossed it in the Sabine River. District Attorney Ralph Prince found that police overlooked the murder investigation.

Ross was brought to trial in Longview for the “murder with malice” of Mr. Reese. The jury was comprised of twelve white people from East Texas. Ross’s lawyer, Gordon R. Wellborn, sought to mitigate the charge by showing that Ross was intoxicated. He asked the jury to "call it a bad day and let the boy go on in life." The District Attorney argued that the jury should give Ross a jail sentence because "that will deter others from committing a similar crime."

The jury returned a verdict for murder "with malice aforethought" and recommended a five year suspended sentence. Ross however, was released immediately.
Joe Reagan Simpson was also indicted for the murder of Mr. Reese. However, the indictment was eventually dismissed. Joyce Nelson told CRRJ that “after court, they just came home.”

Resources:
Featured Case: John Earl Reese

Civil Rights-Era Murder Draws Renewed Attention, Longview News-Journal, December 5, 2009

Negro Boy Murdered in East Texas, Texas Observer, November 2, 1955

East Texas Justice, Texas Observer, April 30, 1957

Texas: Bad Day in Longview, Times, May 6, 1957

Death Certificate of John Earl Reese

Background:
Howard Bromley, 23, was shot three times in the back by a white storekeeper. Mr. Bromley was in a store owned by Ira D. Hinton, Jr. in Northumberland County. The shooting started after an argument between Mr. Bromley and Mr. Hinton. James Tracy, a friend of Bromley’s who was present when he was shot to death, said the shopkeeper and Bromley were engaged in a friendly conversation that turned into an argument.

Legal Status:
Hinton was indicted by a Northumberland County grand jury that included black jurors. He was tried for homicide in December 1955. An all white jury acquitted him after deliberating for 20 minutes. The prosecution argued that the location of the three bullets in Mr. Bromley’s back indicated that he was fleeing the store when he was shot and killed. The defense argued that the shooting was an accident.

Mr.Hinton was originally held in Montross in Westmoreland County instead of at the Northumberland County jail because of the racial tension in the area. He was released on a bond posted by his father, Chairman of the Board of Supervisors of Northumberland County.

Resources:

Shopkeeper Indicted In Va. Slaying, The Chicago Defender(National Edition), November 26, 1955.