Henry Dee

Settlement Reached in Civil Suit Charging Franklin County, MS Role in 1964 KKK Murders

On Monday, June 21, Franklin County, Mississippi agreed to a settlement in an historic civil suit with the families of Charles Moore and  Henry Dee, two 19-year-old Black men who were kidnapped, tortured and murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan on May 2, 1964.

“This is the first time, to my knowledge, that any civil lawsuit against public officials for collaborating with the KKK has reached the point of settlement,” said Margaret Burnham, lead attorney for the family members who brought the suit against Franklin County. Klansman James Ford Seale went to prison in 2007 for his role in the murders; this landmark civil suit addressed the roles of Mississippi government officials in the double murder and subsequent cover-up of what had occurred.

“It’s a bit of a stretch to say they were ‘held accountable,’” Burnham added, “because they did not admit to the facts we presented.”

“I’m convinced there’s nothing else that I can do to get any more truth,” said Thomas Moore, brother of victim Charles. Moore said further that African Americans in his home county “are joyful that somebody brought Franklin County officials to reality and to the way they treated other people.”

Thomas Moore and Thelma Collins, sister of victim Henry Dee, filed the civil suit against Franklin County, MS in August, 2008. The suit focused on the respective roles and actions from 1964 to 1967 of Franklin County Sheriff Wayne Hutto and Franklin County Deputy Sheriff Kirby Shell, both now deceased. “In the aftermath of the killings,” according to the complaint by Moore and Collins,

Sheriff Hutto misled the Plaintiffs when they inquired of the Sheriff about their loved ones. Further, Sheriff Hutto deceived the Plaintiffs into thinking he knew nothing of the whereabouts of Moore and Dee when in fact he did.

Throughout 1964, Hutto and Shell misled investigative agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the murders, concealing their participation in the events of May 2, 1964, the day the two young men were killed.

Hutto and Shell covered up their role in these crimes, deceiving law enforcement officials as well as the Plaintiffs.  Plaintiffs did not become aware of the participation of Hutto and Shell as co-conspirators until the federal indictment was returned on January 24, 2007. Nor could Plaintiffs have discovered Hutto and Shell’s culpability before the indictment. The U.S. Justice Department immunized Charles Edwards, one of the coconspirators and, on November 3, 2006, obtained from Edwards a full statement of the crimes revealing for the first time ever the involvement of Franklin County on the day the men were slain.

Thomas Moore holds photo of his brother, Charles. (Postcard for Mississippi Cold Case, created by David Ridgen.)

“The settlement didn’t need to happen,” noted documentary filmmaker David Ridgen, “if Franklin County officials would have simply apologized to the Moore and Dee families for the actions and inactions of their officials in colluding with and in some cases participating in the Ku Klux Klan’s reign of terror during the civil rights era.”

Ridgen’s film Mississippi Cold Case documented Thomas Moore’s quest to learn the truth about what happened to his brother Charles and to Henry Dee. In their work together on the film Ridgen and Moore uncovered evidence that led to the indictment, trial and conviction of Klansman James Ford Seale.

“I am proud of Thomas Moore for being the juggernaut that pushed this civil suit forward with his lawyers,” Ridgen said, “and I am hopeful that it will lead to civil trials in the near future that will hold Mississippi and elsewhere, state and county, accountable.”

“This is a case about unconscionable crimes and unconscionable deception,” Moore and Collins charged in their complaint.

It is also a case about the systematic denial by Franklin County of law enforcement protection to African-Americans and to whites suspected of opposing the Klan’s campaign of racist terror.

It is a case about the collusive and unlawful relationship between the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and Franklin County.

Franklin County officials stated in their resolution that they do not condone “the horrific deaths of Charles Moore and Henry Dee. “The county desires not to imply the deaths were anything but abhorrent.”

But the county denied any responsibility for the deaths of the two 19-year-old Black men. The officials resolved that the county had not “caused or contributed to the deaths of these two young men. These deaths are believed to have resulted solely from the criminal actions of the Ku Klux Klan.”

In their resolution, the Franklin County officials questioned the evidence in the civil complaint, drawn substantially from the evidence presented in the criminal trial of James Ford Seale that led to his conviction.

George Colllins, President of the Franklin County Board of Supervisors, who signed the resolution accepting the terms of settlement with Thomas Moore and Thelma Collins, had no comment when he was reached on the phone on Tuesday night.

“What we sought to prove was common knowledge at the time,” Margaret Burnham said, “that these crimes could not have persisted without the support of local officials….There is no statute of limitations on murder, no expiration date on moral obligation, and there should be no impunity for human rights violators.”

“I am satisfied with the verdict of the criminal trial, and I’m satisfied with the settlement,” concluded Thomas Moore. “I ran the race and I fought a good fight. I am finished with this case.”

“I am at peace for the first time in 46 years,” Moore said.

(Cross-posted at Civil Rights Cold Case Project)

Podcast

Documents

• Franklin County Board of Supervisors Resolution (PDF)
• Statement, Civil Rights and Restorative Justice, Northeastern University School of Law (PDF)
• Moore v. Franklin County Complaint (PDF)

Additional Coverage

• Michele Norris, “Miss. Officials Agree To Settlement In ’64 Slayings” (NPR)
• Jerry Mitchell, “Lawsuit over ’64 deaths settled” (Jackson Clarion-Ledger)
• Jonathan Saltzman, “Justice follows decades of silence” (Boston Globe)

Killen claims God is on his side

Lawsuit filed last week alleges civil rights violations

Jerry Mitchell and Ben Greenberg
The Clarion-Ledger
March 1, 2010

Convicted Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen says there wasn’t enough legal evidence to imprison him for the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers and that God is going to get whoever helped put him away.

Those written remarks are among the most recent public stirrings from Killen, who also filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the FBI, alleging his civil rights were violated.

“Almighty God … is listening and is recording your acts, thoughts and deeds. One by one you will give account to him,” Killen wrote in a six-page letter obtained by The Clarion-Ledger from a Klansman. His lawyer confirmed the letter is indeed Killen’s.

District Attorney Mark Duncan, who along with Attorney General Jim Hood prosecuted Killen, responded, “I don’t have any trouble standing before God with my role in it.”

In 2005, a Neshoba County jury convicted Killen, now 85, on three counts of manslaughter for his role in the Klan’s June 21, 1964, killings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, commonly known as the Mississippi Burning case.

The FBI is now reexamining the killings. Four suspects are still alive in the case.

In his letter, Killen lambasted prosecutors and Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon, who sentenced Killen to the maximum 60 years in prison. Killen, a former Union sawmill operator and part-time preacher, is serving his time in the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County.

Killen blamed the press and the people of Neshoba County. “You had all the news media that helped indict me for murder on three counts, which you had no legal evidence,” he wrote. “All your grand jury heard was slick tongue talk from a couple of politicians.”

Sally Beam, one of those grand jurors, said that’s not correct.

All the evidence led back to Killen, she said. “We were not out to get him, but he was the one every order went out from. The fact he’s still trying to blame somebody else just tells me his heart is still not in the right place.

“He’s still trying to cover up what needs to be exposed. If I were Edgar Ray Killen, I’d be thinking about my maker and where I’m going to be when I die. He’s a preacher. He knows about heaven and hell.”

Killen says mobster Gregory Scarpa Sr., pistol whipped “testimony” from from Clayton Lewis, a defense attorney in the 1967 federal conspiracy trial of suspects in the civil rights workers’ slayings..

The nearly 40,000 pages of FBI files in the Mississippi Burning case obtained by The Clarion-Ledger do not appear to mention Scarpa or list his informant number. Some other FBI records refer to Scarpa being brought in to help crack the Klan’s 1966 killing of Vernon Dahmer.

Killen said the FBI paid Scarpa $30,000 in reward money — an allegation FBI agents have disputed.

Retired FBI agent Jay Cochran said the reward money was delivered to Mississippi Highway Patrolman Maynard King, who told the FBI where the bodies were buried. Cochran said King was passing the $30,000 on to the person who informed King.

Philip Dray, co-author of We Are Not Afraid: The Story of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, and the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi, said he’s not surprised Killen invoked God’s name since the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi often did that.

Killen said God knows what he did and that he is at peace with God, but Dray noted Killen never actually said he was innocent. “Convicted Klansmen have a special problem with justice,” he said. “Their ‘crimes’ were, in their minds, righteous. They were aimed at specific targets — meddlesome Yankees.”

In Killen’s mind, he said, “It will always be 1865.”

In the letter, Killen says he read many hidden Justice Department files. “I only read those of interest, as I was not hired and I was not a pimp, but I had security clearance, so I read and obtained straight evidence,” he says. “I am not putting some names in this letter as some are still living and believe it or not I am not a betrayer of anyone, especially my friends.”

Exactly who he refuses to betray he didn’t say.

Larry Ellis, a former inmate who has been interviewed by the FBI, said some of what the letter says mirrors much of what Killen told him behind bars.

Ellis told the FBI that Killen said he had access to these files because of his relationship with then-U.S. Sen. Jim Eastland and “did jobs” for Eastland around the country.

Killen said in his letter he had traveled to “most major cities in America.”

On those trips, he said he bragged about his hometown, his home county and his home state. Now, he said, he wants to retrace those steps and apologize.

The Clarion-Ledger obtained the letter from Cole Thornton, Imperial Wizard of the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who attended Killen’s 2005 trial. Thornton said Killen authorized him to release the letter and shared a note that expert Thomas Vastrick of Memphis identified as Killen’s handwriting.

Thornton, whose real name is Charles Denton, said he wants to see “the scoundrels who railroaded this fine man pay up for their deceit.”

In his lawsuit in which he seeks millions of dollars, Killen is demanding all of the federal files in the case.

Hood responded that his office has given Killen’s lawyer “every document we have in our files. The federal prosecutors assured me that they gave us all of the documents in the possession of the federal government.”

Killen remains filled with venom, Hood said. “Hate will eat up a person’s soul. As with all criminals I have had to prosecute, I still hold out hope that their souls will be redeemed.”

Killen has repeatedly referred to the three victims as communists — something the victims’ families say isn’t true.

Ben Chaney, whose brother James was among the victims, said after reading Killen’s letter, “I sort of feel bad for Mr. Killen because he’s losing. The fact is he refuses to look at reality.”

Killen needs to come clean, he said. “God knows what he did, and he knows he did something contrary to what God wants. The truth will set him free.”

Documents

Download the letter we obtained from Edgar Ray Killen (PDF)

Isn’t technology wonderful! You can see our TV 6,000 miles away.  And Facebook brings everyone within a keystroke.

Just before the late evening news in Hawaii, my husband Kenneth said, “a tremendous 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck Chile.”

“That’s awful,” I responded and went to bed thinking no more of it.

Until 5:20am my cell phone rang and rang and rang—“Oh damn, nobody calls this time of morning unless it is bad news.” By the time I was fully aware the landline rang. “Yes Scott, no Scott—thank you Scott” Kenneth said and promptly turned on the TV. We have a Tsunami warning because of the earthquake in Chile.”

“Oh dear, I must get Kaspar’s (the cat) carrying case . . . do we have enough fresh water. . .I hate canned foods. . . etc,” I began the emergency check list in my head. Knowing full well that we have everything. Living next to the water demands a level of preparedness that most people do not have to deal with.

HoneyGirl (the dog) was breathing heavy next to the bed and Kaspar (the cat) was standing on my chest daring me to open my eyes. What a way to awake from a dream. Or am I still dreaming? No, this is real!

The TV news was showing lines at the gas stations and it was still dark. Local residents were scrambling to stock up on water, gas and food as sirens pierced the early morning quiet across the islands ahead of the tsunami. Some stations had enough gas, but other stations reportedly ran out. At supermarkets, residents stocked up on essentials like rice, water and toilet paper in anticipation of the high waters. The TV repeatedly ran the picture of a sign at a store limiting families to two cases of Spam. A must in every local menu.

My first of many calls was to Marilyn, my daughter, to warn her… “Damn!” The sleepy voice on the other end of the phone said. “Mom what a wake up call. Thanks Mom, I’ll get my young’ens together. Aaron is at the airport leaving for a class trip to America and Ashley has to go to class today.” They live at the top of a step hill in Maile, a very safe place to ride out a Tsunami. The home has an unobstructed view of the ocean. It’s about 50 miles from me as the crow flies. But then we have no crows. And I really don’t know how crows fly.

Speaking of birds. There was not the usual morning lyrical rhythms of the birds. Except for the TV news, there was not a sound to be heard. Peering through the darkness, the water was flat and the trees were still. The first rays of the sun were creeping up over Haunauma Bay. This was looking more and more like the twilight zone.

Just at 6:01 am, sirens pierced the silences across Hawaii as promised leading up to the first tsunami arrival at 11:32 am on Saturday—the water began to move in a most unusual way. No waves—just energy. A tsunami advisory was announced shortly after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Japan’s Ryukyu Islands. Like some action movie, I was sure the earth was going to break into pieces.

Civil Defense issued repeated commands. Everyone was told to check the phone book maps to see if you lived in a flood prone area. I did not need the phone book—just look out the window. Yes, we live in an inundation zone. Therefore we had to evacuate. That meant moving to higher ground. The City busses were sent to get everyone evacuated. Even the homeless living on the beaches in tents were taken care of. No one was left behind.

“Happy Tsunami Day” one friend chirped on the phone. In true local fashion—friends and family alike called to offers us love and an elevated place to stay. One friend called to warn another friend and another friend and still another. It was a marvelous relay.

Huddled with all of the high muka muka’s at the Civil Defense headquarters deep in the recesses of Diamond Head Crater, the Managing Director of the City & County of Honolulu, Kirk Caldwell, acting Mayor, while Mayor Mufi was in Washington, DeCeit, said all of the major Streets and Roads to beaches and other low-lying areas were to be closed by 10am. Seaside hotels moved guests to higher ground. Therefore evacuation must be complete by that time. “Urgent action should be taken to protect lives and property” the warning center said, “All shores are at risk no matter which direction they face. Do not go into the ocean—there will be no one to help you if you get into trouble.” The warnings were repeated all morning long.

HoneyGirl, the gentlest, quiet dog in the whole world was unusually restless and making noises. Kaspar was moving from window to doors watching for something outside. My friend Cindy said the animals were just crazy at her place. I took my cue from them and got serious about making plans to leave. We had stayed behind for two previous hurricanes because we could not take the pets with us. Since Katrina, the world watched with horror as pets were left; the rules about shelters have changed.

Everyone followed the directions of the Governor, the County Mayors, Civil Defense, Fire & Police. Just a little after 11:00am all first responders were sent home to take care of their own families. Everyone was prepared for the worst and prayer for the best.

Driving up to the higher grounds of Koko Head District Park, which is the east side of an extinct volcano, we passed only one car on the road.

People moved to higher ground with their tents, chairs and barbeque. The roads leading to Ocean lookouts all around the Island were lined with tailgaters. That was neat. People were talking to each other, making friends, playing games, listening to the radios and of course; Twitter & Facebook had their place. Most people were enjoying the beauty of the day. Organizations, which had planned Hulihuli chicken sales as fundraisers, took the event to the top of the Pali Lookout and sold out. They made a killing. The Kamehemeha School Ho’olaula’a was held at the top of the highest mountain on Oahu, it was a huge success. Only in Hawaii!

Beaches that would normally be crowded with sunbathers at midday on a Saturday were deserted. From our vantage point, we could see the flotilla of naval, commercial and recreational vessels lining the horizon seeking safe waters a couple of miles off the shore.

By 1:30pm the waves had not reached more than 3 feet with no danger to life, limb or property. HoneyGirl had finally laid down comfortably on the grass and Kaspar was asleep in the carrying case. The food had been consumed, the coffee had was getting cold and the drinks warm. It was time to go. Hawaii’s short sojourn into the twilight zone was pau!

It is hard to believe that a day as filled with such joy could be at the expense of the many people who have suffered and died in one of Chile’s worst earthquakes. May they rest in peace.

U.S. Sen. John Kerry plans to introduce legislation next week that would pave the way for the release of thousands of FBI documents on the life and death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Kerry, D-Mass., said the bill, which failed in 2006, can pass this year in honor of King. “I want the world to know what he stood for,” Kerry said. “And I want his personal history preserved and examined by releasing all of his records.”

The bill calls for creating a Martin Luther King Records Collection at the National Archives that would include all government records related to King. The bill also would create a five-member independent review board that would identify and make public all documents from agencies including the FBI — just as a review board in 1992 made public documents related to the 1963 John F. Kennedy assassination.

Mitchell spoke with Kerry and other prominent supporters of the legislation, including US Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and pulitzer prize winning King biographer Taylor Branch. MItchell also spoke with others from the Civil Rights Cold Case Project, who believe Kerry should expand the focus of his important initiative.

Hank Klibanoff, managing editor of the Cold Case Truth and Justice Project, believe[s] Kerry’s idea should be expanded to include the release of documents involving not only King’s assassination, but also other racial slayings from the civil rights era….

Klibanoff met last summer with Attorney General Eric Holder and suggested creating an independent review board to make public “all files, documents and other historic materials related to the racial terror and hate crimes that occurred in the South during the modern civil rights era.”

In an Oct. 27 letter, Holder responded that the Justice Department was discussing the best ways to make “the most responsible public disclosure possible.”…

Ben Greenberg of Boston, whose father served as a special assistant to King in 1962 and 1963, praised Kerry’s legislation. “The murder of Martin Luther King Jr. was a trauma that our country will not recover from unless we can clear the air about what really happened,” he said.

Greenberg, who has spent recent years investigating a number of unsolved killings from the era, including the 1964 killing of Clifton Walker near Woodville, said documents on many other racial slayings from the 1950s and 1960s should be made public, too.

“The effects of these murders linger throughout the South,” he said.

Some FBI documents continue to conceal the name of suspects in these killings, he said. “The people named in the documents, the family members and the perpetrators are dying every day. It is time for the truth to be told and for justice to be done. We need the information while there is still time to use it.”…

Recently the FBI asked for the public’s help in solving 33 killings from the civil rights era — a third of them in Mississippi.

Journalist John Fleming, whose work for The Anniston Star led to an arrest in the 1965 killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Selma, Ala., questioned how the FBI can ask for the public’s help in solving killings but fail to make public the names of crucial witnesses who could shed light on these cases.

Boston Globe reporter Bryan Bender was also on the story.

Nearly half a century after the height of the civil rights movement, hundreds of thousands of pages of government files about the volatile era remain shielded from the American public, buried in FBI field office cabinets, blocked by resistant bureaucracies, or available only with large sections blacked out, according to US officials and researchers.

The situation has prompted a new push in Congress, led by Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, to require that all records relating to the life and death of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. be located, reviewed, and released by a review board at the National Archives similar to those established for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and for Nazi war criminals

Kerry’s plan to introduce legislation this week, however, is seen as only the first step in a broader movement to force the government to disclose what it knows – and did – about violence against blacks during the civil rights era, including scores of unsolved lynching and bombing cases.

Bender spoke with Thomas Moore, who, as brother of murder victim Charles Eddie Moore, now works with Cold Case project as a family advocate.

Thomas Moore is among the few family members to see the murder case of a loved one reopened decades after the height of the civil rights movement.

But that was only after a journalist obtained previously unreleased federal and state records about the killing of his brother, Charles.

“It wasn’t until 2005 that I was able to receive the unredacted FBI files,’’ Moore said. And it was not until this month, he added, that he obtained the Mississippi autopsy photos.

As for countless other cases, Moore said he believes “there is still a lot of information out there. It should have been released a long time ago.’’

Bender spoke with me as well:

Part of the problem, many researchers say, is that unless they know which specific documents to request there is little chance of success, and as a result there needs to be an alternate mechanism along the lines of what Kerry is advocating for King files.

They insist that what the government knew at the time about widespread racial violence could be crucial in solving some murders, such as the brutal killing of Clifton Walker, a father of five who was shot in the face on his way home from work in Woodville, Miss., in 1964.

“The FBI documents I have [on the case] are highly redacted. I stare at them every day,’’ said Ben Greenberg, 40, a freelance journalist in Somerville who is working with the Cold Case Project. “If I knew whose name was under there or could better piece together what circumstances are being described, I’d be further down the path.’’

He thinks government files about a rash of racially motivated killings at the time in southwest Mississippi might contain information that could help solve multiple cases.

“If these files were more broadly available and not redacted they could provide a road map,’’ said Greenberg, whose father, Paul, worked for King in the early 1960s.

There’s more in Bender and Mitchell‘s articles.

JACKSON, Miss. — This state, whose civil rights history is marred with negatives, wants to name its new Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters after slain civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.

“Given our state and its history, it would do a lot to show that Mississippi has changed,” said U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat.

“I think it’s an excellent idea and one that I would support,” Thompson said.

The Jackson City Council will vote today on a resolution supporting the move. Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman were killed June 21, 1964, while participating in Freedom Summer, an intensive voter registration drive aimed at breaking Mississippi’s resistance to civil rights for African Americans….

“It could send a signal to the rest of the nation that we at least understand some of the things that have happened in the past and realize that this is in tune of correcting some of the negatives back then,” Smith said.

FBI spokeswoman Deborah Madden said the agency will defer to Congress for a final decision on naming the building, which the federal government is leasing….

Angela Lewis, Chaney’s daughter, said naming the building after the trio would be “a very nice gesture” that could contribute to a better understanding of the era.

I’m ambivalent about this possibility of a Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman FBI Field Office. In 1964, when the field office was established, attention to the three murdered civil rights workers precluded attention to most other of the numerous incidents that warranted investigation and response. In his book Racial Matters: The FBI’s Secret File on Black America, 1960-72, historian Kenneth O’Reilly writes:

The reason for skepticism about the FBI presence was obvious. The violence had not abated. By COFO’s estimate 450 incidents makred the three months beginning June 15. Segregationists three voter registration workers in Hattiesburg as Hoover made his speech [at the opening of the Jackson Field Office]. (171)

Despite enormous resources expended by the Bureau on solving the Neshoba murders, there was much skepticism about that as well. As Dick Gregory remarked at the time:

If these Mississippi white Klansmen, who do not know how to plan crimes, who are ignorant, illiterate bastards, can completely baffle our FBI, what are those brilliant Communist spies doing to us?

Though Edgar Ray Killen was finally convicted in 2005 on manslaughter charges for his role in the murders, the case is far from resolved.

The FBI has been been trying to set a different tone in the present day, but questions remain about what the Bureau will accomplish.

It is meaningful that US Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who is a Mississippi Civil Rights Movement veteran, as well as the Mississippi NAACP and James Chaney’s daughter Angela, support the name change. It is worth noting, however, that journalist Chris Joyner has no quotes from Ben Chaney, brother of James Chaney, Rita Schwerner-Bender, widow of Michael Schwerner, or David Goodman, brother of Andrew Goodman. All three regularly make public statements regarding the Neshoba murders and are outspoken advocates for a broad approach to justice for their murdered family members—and for the countless other victims, many still nameless to the world at large.

Since I first posted about The Civil Rights Cold Case Project, we’ve added the trailer for the documentary mini-series that we are currently developing in partnership with WNET.org and Paperny Films. I’m on there with the Clifton Walker Case a few times, starting at around 00:45.

I am pleased to announce that The Civil Rights Cold Case Project website is now up and running at http://coldcases.org.

My previous blog post, about my most recent trip to Mississippi, was cross posted from the Cold Case Project site.

The Civil Rights Cold Case Project brings together the power of investigative reporting, narrative writing, documentary filmmaking and interactive multimedia production to reveal the long-neglected truths behind scores of race-motivated murders, and to facilitate reconciliation and healing.

Our reporters are reopening and investigating several cold cases—producing important evidence that prosecutors have used to build criminal cases against killers and conspirators who have walked free for more than 40 years.

The photo from the home page slideshow, above, is one I took on Poor House Road, in the area where Clifton Walker was murdered on February 28, 1964.

There’s more on the site and much more to come.

In October, I was in Mississippi again, following leads in my investigation of the 1964 murder of Clifton Walker, a black man from Woodville, MS.

Driving home from the swing shift at the International Paper plant in Natchez, MS, Walker was ambushed by Klansmen, who stopped his car on a deserted road and blew his face off with shotguns in the dark of night. He never made it home to his wife and five children. He was 37 years old.

The Mississippi Highway and Safety Patrol and the FBI investigated for nine months and identified numerous suspects—including two who were recommended for arrest—but no one was ever charged.

This post works around the edges of the story to convey a little of what it’s like to conduct a real-time investigation of decades-old events. I’ll be publishing an in-depth article about the case soon.

The Tip

“One of my cousins, who still lives in Woodville, told me Emma’s in Centreville,” came the excited voice over the phone. “She just opened up a club there.”

There are two towns in Wilkinson County, MS—Woodville, which is the county seat, and Centreville, which is 15 miles east of there.

The caller was one of Clifton Walker’s nephews. I had just met and interviewed him for the first time the day before in Louisiana. In 1964 he and his family lived on the same 87 acre family plot of land as Walker and his family.

This was big. 1964 Mississippi Highway and Safety Patrol documents said Emma, a black cook at the truck stop where Walker’s murder was allegedly planned, had knowledge crucial to solving the case. I had found subjects in the documents and confirmed others dead, but I had nothing on Emma, past or present.

“Did your cousin say the name of the club or where it is?” I asked Walker’s nephew.

“No,” he replied, “she didn’t mention that.”

Centreville is a small town of 1500 people. Finding a club that just opened up there didn’t seem daunting. The town is 45 miles from the hotel where I was staying in Natchez. I got into my rental car and drove there.

Main Street in Centreville is about eight blocks long. I parked my car near the western end, got out and started walking east. After a few blocks, I passed a small group of young black men near the corner of West Park Street and noticed a little place down that road that looked like a bar. A number of people were standing around outside. Was that Emma’s “club”?

After another block, I came to the Camp Van Dorn World War II Museum—the tall, box shaped, single-story brick building might have once been a bank or post office; the brown paint looked newer than the paint on any of the other buildings. Camp Van Dorn was an army base that operated in Centreville from 1942-1947.

It wouldn’t take long in such a small town for rumors about my work to spread widely. Maybe inside the museum I could get into a conversation that would reveal what I needed to know without asking direct questions about Emma.

The door was locked. The museum closed at 4:00 pm, and it was already after 5:00. I turned around and started walking back in the direction of my car and tried to come up with Plan B. One of the guys from the street corner was now standing across the street from me.

He called out: “What’re you looking for?”

His name was Robert. I had my camera over my shoulder. I said I was from Boston.

“Boston, Massachusetts?” he asked, “where they have whales and shit?”

Robert suggested beers; I assented, thinking we might go to the place on West Park, but he took me down the block to McKey’s Grocery.

“What kind of beer you drink?” he asked. “I drink Bud Light.”

“That’s fine. Hey, it’s on me,” I said, giving him a 20, “just give me the change.”

He came back a few minutes later with two 24 oz Bud Light cans.

“Seventeen dollars and three cents. Let me hold some of that for you,” Robert offered. “I’ll take you out to Camp Van Dorn and show you underground bomb bunkers, old torpedos and shit like that. You might take a few pictures of me standing in a cave.“

“Thanks,” I answered. “Maybe if I make it back here, but I need to get back to Natchez soon.”

We walked another block, crossed the street and walked a few feet down West Park and sat down on a stoop in front of an old pair of forest green double-doors.

His friends started coming by.

“This guy is a photographer from Boston,” Robert said.

Robert grabbed one of his buddies and started posing and flashing gang signs.

“Snap me. Don’t forget to snap me.”

One guy pulled off his shirt to show off his tattoos from prison.

“You make sure you take this shit back to Boston, Massachusetts.”

“What kind of white girls you got up there in Boston? They freaky?”

I gestured towards the bar down the block. “How long has this place been around?”

“A long time. Years.”

I snapped more photos of Robert’s friends.

Robert leaned over to me, saying, “They see you sitting here with me, so you’re cool. Why don’t you let me hold that 10 for you?”

It was getting dusky and it was time to go.

At the street corner one of the guys started asking me for $5 for a pack of t-shirts.

I thought about where else I could ask around about Emma’s club, but it was definitely time to go.

I heard them calling out as I walked back to the car. I didn’t turn around. I got into the car and drove down a side street to weave my way back to Highway 24.

I called Walker’s nephew from the car and told him I didn’t find Emma’s place.

The Source

In the morning, I drove to the Natchez Coffee House, got some breakfast, used the wifi and sorted through some of my photographs. At around 11:00 am, I went out to my car to call the Woodville cousin who was the source of the information that Emma had a club. Her mother, now deceased, was another of Clifton Walker’s sisters. All of Walker’s 10 siblings are dead.

“Why did he go and run his mouth off like that without knowing the facts?”

She was exasperated.

“Emma opened a new club there. But it was twenty-five years ago,” she said. “I was a little girl when I heard it. I went to Centreville with my mother. Emma walked past us in the store we were shopping in. Mama said, ‘if it wasn’t for that woman, my brother would still be alive.’”

“Is Emma still there? Is she alive?” I asked.

“I have no idea.”

It was a 25-year-old tip.

Return to Centreville

I decided to visit the office of Centreville Chief of Police Jimmy Ray Reese.

“It was over him either using the white restrooms or drinking out of the white water fountain” at International Paper, Chief Reese told me.

Reese said he knew all about the Walker case. He said a number of things I hadn’t heard others say before.

“Back in those days they had the signs, you know. He’d been told don’t do one or the other. And apparently he did and he was found shot with buckshot. Something like 250 holes were found in his car. I think a tree might have been cut across the road and he might have gotten out to check on the tree and they shot him.”

I told him about Emma.

“Yeah I know her,” he said.

“She still around?” I asked.

“Yup,” he replied, “I talked to Emma last week. She was involved?”

It was no longer dated hearsay. Emma was alive.

“She’s mentioned in the documents as having knowledge,” I explained, trying to not speak too excitedly.

“I’ve been in law enforcement in this town 33 years, 34 years in January. She’s been here ever since then,” Reese said. “She ran a big night club. I know her quite well, and we always got along good.”

“When she ran that juke, I was the deputy and we had a lot dealings,” Reese continued. “A lot of them at these jukes don’t like to tell you who was fighting, but she’d always point em out to me and have em arrested and try to stop things. She tried to run a pretty good place. She had a lot of pull back in them days.”

I finally met Emma the next morning. She was 81 years old, tall, even as she bent to use her cane. She had small, braided pigtails pinned tightly behind her ears. She was getting over the flu and was wearing a white, terrycloth robe. Her recollections comported with details in the 1964 Mississippi Highway and Safety Patrol documents.

“They come down there and they questioned me,” she said. “They knocked on the door, I answered the door and they just pushed the door on over.”

After the murder she was living in Louisiana.

“They brought me big pictures. He was laying there with blood, he was full of blood and I didn’t look at them cause it was horrible.”

She clearly had not forgotten it.

Did she have information crucial to my investigation? She sure didn’t think so, but that remains to be seen.

(Cross-posted on The Civil Rights Cold Case Project blog.)

Exhuming James Chaney’s body could help identify others involved in the Ku Klux Klan’s 1964 killings of Chaney and two other civil rights workers, a world-renowned forensic pathologist says.

That’s because X-rays show two bullets were never removed from Chaney, said Dr. Michael Baden of New York City. “They’re still in his body, and they could be matched to the weapons that did it.”

The FBI contacted Baden last week about his findings.

Chaney’s brother, Ben, said he and his family support an exhumation. “If they (FBI agents) want to take the bullets from my brother, we’ll do that,” he said. “Whatever they need.”

This evidence first came to light in 2005, when Baden and pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne were studying the X-rays and other evidence for the 2005 prosecution of Edgar Ray Killen—the Klansman who was convicted that year on manslaughter charges for his role in orchestrating the killings of the three civil rights workers.

After the defense agreed to the facts, prosecutors didn’t call the two forensic pathologists as witnesses.

Baden said he decided to request the exhumation after hearing the FBI was now reinvestigating the trio’s killings.

No murder weapons were ever found in the trio’s killings, but former inmate Larry Ellis, who had a prison cell next to Killen in 2007, recently told FBI agents that Killen talked of a murder weapon being buried on his property. Killen, who was a part-time preacher, lived in Union.

If a gun was recovered, it still could be tested to see if it fired the fatal bullets into Chaney, Baden said. “And there might still be DNA and fingerprints on the weapon.”…

According to a confession by Horace Doyle Barnette, Klansman Alton Wayne Roberts grabbed Schwerner, 24, and shot him once, then grabbed Goodman, 20, and shot him once. Jordan then joined Roberts – and perhaps others – in shooting Chaney, 21, to death.

Ballistics confirmed that bullets removed from all three bodies came from two different .38-caliber pistols.

Why weren’t the pathologists called to the stand in 2005? Roberts is dead but, as noted in the article sidebar, four suspects are still living:

• Olen Burrage of Philadelphia
• Pete Harris of Meridian
• former Philadelphia police officer Richard Willis of Noxapater
• Jimmie Snowden of Hickory

In 2005, there were as many as 9 other living suspects. Not knowing all that was involved in accomplishing a successful prosecution of Edgar Ray Killen, I allow there may have been reason to limit testimony once the defense agreed to the facts in the case. But without more information important questions linger, pointing to possible cover-ups.

Ben Chaney has said that when pursuing the indictment of Edgar Ray Killen in 2005,

the District Attorney did not vigorously in the grand jury proceedings pursue the indictments against … the remaining people that participated in this crime.

After the Killen trial the prosecutors misrepresented crucial facts in the case. Prosecutors ambitious to right four decades of denied justice should have viewed the trial as an important discovery tool for bringing new evidence to light. Instead, new evidence has remained hidden four and a half years while suspects have been dying off.

Justice and the truth require swift, efficient and determined action. When it comes to these decades old cold cases, there is no time for selective disclosures of evidence.The Justice Department and the state of Mississippi must pursue this evidence without delay.

One of the themes of this blog is the pressing need to look not only at who pulled the trigger in decades old Civil Rights Era murders but also to look more broadly at how institutions, people in positions of power and others in the broader society enabled or encouraged the countless crimes against African Americans and their allies.

Jerry Mitchell’s journalism does both.

In the video above, Jerry discusses with Stephen Colbert some of the murderers his reporting has helped to put away. In their discussion, Jerry also touches on the corruption that he exposed in the handling of the two 1964 Byron De La Beckwith trials that ended in mistrials. Jerry  exposed that the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was aiding Beckwith’s defense while the state was prosecuting him. The Sovereignty Commission was the spy agency established by the Mississippi State Legislature in 1956 to monitor and oppose civil rights activity. The Commission’s files were declassified in 1998 and are available online.

This week Jerry has published a remarkable article adding substantial new evidence that former US Senator James O. Eastland (D-MS) had strong ties with the Ku Klux Klan and played a significant role in helping Klansmen escape convictions for their alleged roles in the Neshoba County murders of the three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.

Informants told the FBI that Eastland met with Klan leaders and courted the Klan’s vote in his 1966 re-election race. The senator also talked with suspects in the Neshoba County case, including then-Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and defense lawyers, getting updates on the case.

In 1965, U.S. District Judge Harold Cox of Jackson – whose appointment to the bench Eastland engineered – threw out the indictments of all the suspects, except Rainey and his deputy, Cecil Price.

An FBI memo said Eastland, who was a college buddy of Cox, “has been taking credit for the federal government dropping charges against those indicted in the Neshoba County slayings.”

According to the FBI, Rainey penned a letter saying, “I know for a fact that James O. Eastland helped prevent the trial of 16 other men.”

On March 28, 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the indictments.

A “prominent local Klansman” in Meridian told the FBI that Eastland had appeared at a rally in Forest and invited Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers to speak with him: “Eastland stated that he would help the 17 defendants in the Neshoba County case and that he has been ‘pulling strings for them.’”

Jerry’s article also discusses soon to be published writings and statements by Killen, as well as other evidence, elaborating on the Klansman’s alleged ties to his US Senator.

Eastland grew up in Hillsboro and was buried in Eastern Cemetery in Forest.

Killen, who grew up in neighboring south Neshoba County, said he developed a relationship with Eastland after becoming friends with Leander Perez, an arch-segregationist in Louisiana.

Documents from the Eastland papers at the University of Mississippi show Eastland and Perez shared information on purported communists.

Ellis told the FBI that Killen said his work for Eastland was “to stop the communist Jews or their soldiers.”

(Read the rest.)