I started this blog in 2004 to write about things like this photo of my father and James Baldwin in Birmingham, AL in 1963 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. In time, however, blogging led to investigative journalism about unpunished lynchings and other violence from the civil rights era. In the summer of [...]
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Thomas Moore, phone interview by Ben Greenberg, June 22, 2010 [7:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
47th Annual Mississippi Civil Rights Martyrs Memorial Service, Conference and Caravan
Today and tomorrow in Neshoba County, MS is the annual memorial for James Chaney, Michael Schewerner, Andrew Goodman, and all civil rights era racial murder victims. I first attended in 2005. It is an important, meaningful event that is also an opportunity to meet and listen to famous Civil Rights Movement veterans and many unsung heroes [...]
Save the Blacks
This is brilliant coverage of the fight of Turkey Creek, Mississippi African Americans to save their community. Turkey Creek was founded by freed slaves in 1866. Their descendants have been fighting dispossession by developers and environmental racism for years. I interviewed Wyatt Cenac’s guide, Derrick Evans, in January 2006, 6 months after Hurricane Katrina devastated his community with [...]
Investigations Force Feds to Revisit Murders of Civil Rights Era
I’m covering the developments in the Stanley Nelson’s Frank Morris murder investigation at Colorlines today: On Dec. 10, 1964, a 51-year-old, black shoe-shop owner named Frank Morris was burned alive inside his store in Ferriday, La. Morris miraculously survived severe burns to all of the skin on his body, was hospitalized and lived four more [...]
The Takeaway: Federal Initiative Fails to Warm Cold Cases
I appeared on The Takeaway this morning with New York Times reporter Shaila Dewan and Catherine Walker, whose father Clifton was murdered by Klansmen on February 28, 1964. Today’s segment was a follow up to Dewan’s article in yesterday’s Times. //
The FBI’s Slow Race Against Time
As far as I knew, none of the children of Clifton Walker had ever been contacted by FBI agents regarding the February 28, 1964 racial killing of their father, near Woodville, MS. Still, I thought I should confirm this, so a few nights ago I gave a call to Walker’s second daughter Catherine and asked [...]
The Ever Miraculous Pete Seeger
Via Rolling Stone (sorry about the commercial; this is worth it). Pete Seeger may be 91 years old, but the iconic folk singer still has plenty to protest. On Friday night at New York’s City Winery, Seeger debuted a new song he wrote about the disastrous BP oil spill as part of a fundraising concert [...]
Coroner Calls Death of Mississippi Man Homicide, Attributed Solely to Taser
UPDATE 7/28: The Bolivar Commercial has substantial new information the case. Jermaine Williams, a 30-year-old African-American man from Bolivar County, MS, died in police custody on July 23, 2010. Little has been released about the circumstances of his death—except that the local deputy coroner is calling it a homicide by taser. On Saturday, Bolivar County [...]
A Little More Justice in Mississippi
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 [...]
Thomas Moore, phone interview by Ben Greenberg, June 22, 2010 [7:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadEdgar Ray Killen Says God Will Get You (If You Helped Put Him Away)
[I'm honored to have collaborated with Jerry Mitchell on this article appearing on page 1 of today's Jackson Clarion-Ledger. —BG] 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 [...]
What the FBI Showed Him
Last weekend, on February 6, Catherine Walker and I were emailing back and forth about our plans to interview people familiar with the unsolved civil rights murder of her father Clifton Walker 46 years ago. Around mid-afternoon we had a breakthrough; Catherine wrote to tell me about her conversation with the son of a possible [...]
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- St. Petersburg Police Bind Hands And Feet Of 5-Year-Old African-American Girl
- Lynching In Tuskegee —blog this now!!
- More On The Prisoners From Orleans Parish Prison
- “Uppity,” That’s Racist for “Kill”
