If you've been watching the mainstream news on last week's indictment of James Ford Seale in connection with the May 1964 Klan murders of two nineteen year old, Black Mississippians, Charles Moore and Henry Dee, you may have come across this interesting tidbit that appeared in the New York Times:
In 2002, Mr. Seale’s son began telling newspaper reporters that his father was dead. But Thomas Moore, the elder brother of Charles Moore, returned to the area with a documentary filmmaker on a trip in 2004 [sic*], and a local resident directed him to the mobile home where Mr. Seale lived. Mr. Seale ran inside and shut the door.
But it wasn't only James Ford Seale's son who was helping his father keep a low profile after the Dee-Moore murder case was re-opened in 2000. Some locals in Meadville, MS and other nearby towns have been speaking up lately, to help set the record straight. Franklin County Sheriff James Newman told the Natchez Democrat's Julie Finley that he thought reports that Seale was considered dead are misleading.
The people of Franklin County knew Seale was alive, he said.
The brother of victim Charles Moore, Thomas, once believed Seale was dead, but residents of Franklin County did not, Newman said.
The other thing locals want to set straight is the false report in many papers that James Ford Seale was a "former sheriff's deputy." Finley reports:
Despite what national and state media are reporting, James Ford Seale was never a commissioned deputy in Franklin County, Sheriff James Newman said....
Newman, sheriff in the county for nearly 25 years, said he checked with the state commissioning board and local records and could find no record of official service by Seale....
The force of this correction, I think, is to keep the murders of Charles Moore and Henry Dee from appearing too much like the 1964 murders of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman. In that more widely familiar case, everyone knows that the Klan and the police were essentially the same entity.
I would like to see Sheriff Newman use his access to state and local records to look for more evidence in the Dee-Moore murder case---evidence against James Ford Seale and evidence against the many others involved who have not been charged.
Arthur Littleton, a former mayor of Bude, confirmed Newman’s statements. Littleton was living in Franklin County when Moore and Henry Dee were killed.
“As far as hired by the county, I don’t think that ever happened,” Littleton said. “What kind of happened back at that time was there were some cards the sheriff gave out to individuals. If someone needed a deputy they could call someone with a card.”
Seale may have received such a card, Littleton said.
The cards and the title “honorary deputy” usually went to residents who helped the sheriff get elected, said Mary Lou Webb the longtime publisher of the Franklin Advocate newspaper.
Webb and her husband David bought the paper in the 1962.
“(Honorary deputies) don’t have any official capacity at all,” Webb said.
These folks are setting the record but not setting it straight. Seting it straight would involve wider discussions of sate and local records. It would also involve acknowledging the roles of other community people in the deaths of Charles Moore and Henry Dee. For example, there was a David Webb in Meadville, MS who was Publicity Director for Americans for the Preservation of the White Race in 1964 (see item 3 in the linked document). The 1964 segregationist might not be Mary Lou Webb's husband. But without open discussion of the past, we cannot but wonder whether this woman who speaks for Meadville today is married to someone who actively peddled the lies believed by the killers of Charles Moore and Henry Dee.
Littleton and Webb both said they never thought Seale was dead.
“I think his son told the FBI he was dead, but he used to get out and walk around,” Littleton said.
Webb said Seale had been laying low for a while, and it was possible that some people might have thought he died.
“I honestly don’t think the majority of the people did,” she said.
According to Webb, most people in Meadville knew Seale was alive. What else do they know?
James Ford Seale deserves to be prosecuted. It is the absolute least the families and loved ones of Charles Moore and Henry Dee deserve. But by itself, the single prosecution is hardly a path to truth and reconciliation.
~
* The trip by Thomas Moore with David Ridgen and the Jackson Free Press was in July 2005, not in 2004, as stated in the NY Times.
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