If you’ve watched the 1st season of Treme then you know: incredible writing and acting in a hard-hitting rendition of post-Katrina life in New Orleans. This edit of clips by here’s luck makes an emotional arc out of the experiences of the main female characters. It is, as here’s luck calls it, a prayer for New Orleans. I might even call it a psalm. Â (Warning: spoilers)
The FBI’s Slow Race Against Time
(Left to right) Shirley Walker, Clifton Walker, Jr., Catherine Walker on Poor House Road, Wilkinson County, MS, near the spot where their father Clifton Walker was gunned down by Klansmen.
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 her if her family has heard from the FBI.
“I wish we had, no,” Catherine answered.
I was checking with Catherine because I had just received the DOJ’s second annual report on its activities regarding civil rights era racial murders (PDF), as required by the Emmet Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act. In the section of the report on “Notifying Victim Family Members,” I read:
The FBI has devoted considerable resources to locating the next of kin for the victims, successfully locating family members for 93 of the 122 victims.
I thought: well, I located the Walkers two and a half years ago with almost no resources and without the benefit of even standard reporters’ tools, like access to Lexis Nexis. The Walkers haven’t reported hearing from the FBI previously, but maybe they’ve heard from the Bureau since I last talked to them.
“Nobody has contacted me,” Catherine said.
“Could the FBI have contacted one of your sisters or your brother,” I asked?
“No,” Catherine said, “they would have told me.”
The Till Bill requires that the Department of Justice “expeditiously investigate unsolved civil rights murders” and “provide all the resources necessary to ensure timely and thorough investigations in the cases involved.”
Thus the DOJ reported:
As part of the departmentâs efforts to uncover relevant information regarding our unsolved civil rights era homicides, we continue to engage in a comprehensive outreach program, meeting with a broad array of interested individuals and organizations.
Outreach has not included reaching the Walkers—though, as you’ll see in the list of cases, below, the Clifton Walker murder is one of the 50 some cases that is still open and under active investigation. What has FBI outreach involved, then?
- Two meetings with NGOs that investigate and do advocacy regarding civil rights era racial murders
- An unspecified number of meetings with national civil rights groups, such as the NAACP, National Urban League and Southern Poverty Law Center “to encourage those organizations to reach out to their field offices and to try to obtain information on cold cases”
- Attending the Mississippi Civil Rights Veterans Conference in Jackson, MS in 2009 and 2010
- Attending a conference on an long unresolved case in Monroe, GA
- Attending a town hall meeting at a film screening held in Syracuse by the Syracuse University School of Law Cold Case Justice Initiative
- Attending a town hall meeting at a film screening held in Baton Rouge, LA
- Outreach to FBI field offices and US Attorney’s offices in districts where there are open cold cases
- Presenting at the 2009 Criminal Civil Rights Conference at the National Advocacy Center in Columbia, SC
- Participation in the annual conferences of the National Black Prosecutors Association
- Meeting with the Mississippi Highway and Safety Patrol, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation and “numerous other state and local law enforcement agencies”
The report does not detail any time spent in the communities where the murders that they say they are investigating have occurred.
The Clifton Walker FBI file, which I’ve obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, mentions in passing seven other victims whose names are not included on the list of cases the FBI is addressing. All of the reporters that I know who work on civil rights era cold cases have found the same thing: one case leads to another. To draw out the connections and make the necessary discoveries, investigators have to go into the communities where the murders occurred and give local people the opportunity to come forward and share what they know and what they’ve heard.
When I called Catherine Walker I had two important pieces of news to share with her: first, that the DOJ report shows that the FBI has not closed her father’s murder case and second, that Wiley Cavin died in Woodville on July 22 at the age of 85. To our knowledge, Cavin was the last living member of the racially mixed carpool that Clifton Walker rode with to and from work at the International Paper plant in Natchez, MS the day he was murdered. Cavin was therefore one of the last people to see Walker alive.
I spoke with Cavin over the phone last summer. He recalled being interviewed by the FBI as well being under FBI surveillance during the spring of 1964, following the murder:
They set up at that little old store and watched me like a hawk watching a chicken.
Cavin had not been re-contacted by the FBI at the time when we spoke last summer. In fact, none of the  living subjects mentioned in state and federal documents, whom I have interviewed over the last three years, have reported being contacted by the FBI outside of 1964.
It turned out Catherine had some news for me, too:
Remember Wright Williams, my uncle, the one who went to Baton Rouge to contact the FBI about Daddy’s murder? He died last weekend, in Atlanta.
“They are dying real fast,” she went on.
That’s three in the year 2010. First Mr. Nettles[1], then Wiliey Cavin and Wright Williams. There is an urgency I feel to get the FBI and the Justice Department to get some answers before they die. Once they’re dead that’s the end of it. We never get closure.
It is heartening to know that the Walker case has not been closed, but what exactly does it mean that it’s open? The Till Bill has not been fully funded by Congress—and that may be a significant part of the problem. These investigations cannot be part-time work for agents or for the federal and local government prosecutors and investigators assigned to these cases. Regional task forces, including full time special agents and attorneys need to be assigned for every area involved.
Without that kind of structure in place, the FBI cannot make the “great progress” that the DOJ report claims has been made on civil rights era unsolved murders. Not one single suspect is under federal indictment, fifty four cases are being closed and only two new investigation files have been opened this year. The Justice Department has not empanelled a single investigative grand jury.
Even where prosecutions are not possible, the FBI has a responsibility to provide as much information as it can to the victims’ families. “The truth is the only thing that can take this big burden off of our shoulders,” Catherine said “to know exactly who it was that killed Daddy.”
(Cross-posted on The Civil Rights Cold Case Project)
Related Reading
- Hank Klibanoff, “The glacial pace of justice,” Washington Post, August 8, 2010
- John Flemming, “Cold cases challenge the search for civil rights-era justice,” Anniston Star, August 8, 2010.
- Stanley Nelson, “FBI adds Joseph Edwards to unsolved 1960s cold case list,” Concordia Sentinel, August 5, 2010
- Jerry Mitchell, “Report: Half of FBI’s civil rights-era cold cases are closed,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, August 3, 2010
Documents
Though the DOJ and FBI has frequently alluded to a list of  more than 100 victims, this report is the first instance that I am aware of where the full list has been made public, along with information about whether or not the case is still open. I’ve pulled the list out of the report for easier access. You can view it, below.
DOJ Civil Rights Cold Case List
- J.B. Nettles owned the truck stop where Clifton Walker’s murder was allegedly planned. I interviewed him with Catherine in 2009. He died in February 2010. [↩]
Home of the Free, Prison Camp of the Brown
The lawyer was en route but border patrol “didn’t want to wait” so they took her into detention. She allegedly ran a stop sign.
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 for the Gulf Restoration Network and Global Green USA . “It’s a strange, strange song,” said Seeger about the new tune, which featured a simple finger-picked chord progression and gravelly ominous lyrics like, “When the drill baby drill turns to spill baby spill/God’s counting on me/God’s counting on you.” Check out video of “God’s Counting on Me, God’s Counting on You” above.
After his set, Seeger told Rolling Stone he doesn’t write many songs these days, but the oil spill inspired him to team up with folk singer Lorre Wyatt to write the track at his home in Beacon, New York. “I’m a fan of old songs that have a lot of repetition, spirituals,” Seeger said. “Some of the greatest songs in the world only have one line, like ‘This little light of mine.’ ”
It was a busy week for Seeger. On Wednesday, he traveled to Albany, New York, where he sang the new number outside the state senate chamber to protest hydraulic fracturing, a controversial natural gas drilling technique. “I performed for 40 newspaper and radio reporters,” he said. “It made sense down there, too. When there’s a great big problem lets get together and do something about it and not leave it up to the government, the rich the poor.”
Apparently there’s also a new Pete Seeger record just out!
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 deathâexcept that the local deputy coroner is calling it a homicide by taser.
On Saturday, Bolivar County Deputy Coroner J.O. Trice said he considered the death of Williams a homicide and attributed it solely to the TASER.
âThe cause of death was cardiac arrhythmia that was induced by the electrical tasing device (TASER),â he said on Saturday. âThe young man was quite healthy for a 30-year-old fellow.
âMost of it is still pending,â he said. âWeâre just waiting on the results from the toxicology but it has not changed my opinion about the cause of death. The toxicology report may take a month or so before we get all the results back.â
Trice’s superior, Bolivar County Corner Dr. Nathaniel Brown, has told the press that there was alcohol in Williams blood and cocaine in his urine.
âThe blood/cocaine level is still pending,â Brown said. âCocaine can cause heart arrhythmia and death by itself. The cocaine coupled with an electrical shock … that combination could have caused his death.â
Regardless, Williamsâ death could still fall under accidental or justifiable homicide, according to Brown who said that was just his opinion as he is not an attorney.
It is notable that Tasers are quite new to the Cleveland, MS police department in Bolivar County. According to the Bolivar Commercial:
The Cleveland Police Department recently started using TASERs as a way to subdue resistive and combative individuals.
The department underwent training as well as having to be on the receiving end of a TASER before they were allowed to use them on the street.
The newspaper also reports that the taser used was TASER X26 Electronic Control Device (ECD), which has “a recording device built in that cannot be tampered with.” According to the 2008 Amnesty International report Less Than Lethal: The Use of Stun Weapons in U.S. Law Enforcement, the X26 is
programmed to be activated in automatic five-second bursts, although the officer can stop the charge at any time by engaging the safety switch. The charge can also be prolonged beyond five-seconds if the trigger is held down continuously. The operator can also inflict repeated shock cycles with each pull of the trigger as long as both barbs remain attached to the subject. The only technical limit to the number or length of the electrical cycles is the life of the battery, which can be ten minutes or more.
It will therefore be important to establish how many times the device was used on Mr. Williams, at what interval if more than once, and whether the electrical charge put into Mr. Williams body was prolonged beyond the 5 second default. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigations is investigating, according to the local news report.
I am talking to local sources and will be reporting more information about this case soon.
Arizona Police Officer Says SB 1070 Violates the Constitution
Over at Cure This my Twitter friend los anjalis blogged this video of Phoenix, Arizona police officer Paul Dobson talking about his opposition to SB 1070. “This law is – pure and simple – a racist law,” Dobson says.
Thanks to los anjalis for also transcribing important portions of Officer Dobson’s statement:
So under SB1070 I know that people will not call officers in the case of a real emergency. I could see this type of scenario: a woman is being beaten by her husband or her significant other. And, if I show up, and I develop reasonable suspicion, or LESS, even, that the person that is a perpetrator in this case, is in this country extralegally, i’m going to start heading in the direction of asking the victim of the case, are you here illegally? I will have to arrest both of them—I’ll be required to—and both will be deported. It violates our calling to serve and protect. It violates, under our Constitution, the requirement to serve and protect.
That the racist law will deter women from seeking needed protections against domestic violence and could result in victims of abuse being deported with their abuser is an important point. My Physicians for Human Rights colleagues Kathleen Sullivan and Erin Hustings have made a similar point about how the law will affect asylum seekers who have fled abuse and torture in their home countries.
In 2009, J-H- was an asylum seeker living in Phoenix, Arizona. J-H- is a survivor of female genital cutting (FGC) in her African homeland. As a victim of and activist against FGC, J-H- was targeted and violently attacked in her country, and her home was burned to the ground. Fearing for her life and safety, J-H- fled to the US without good immigration documents, and with almost no material possessions.
In Arizona, J-H- was fortunate to find a volunteer lawyer who helped her apply to the federal government for asylum. Physicians for Human Rights was able to find a physician from our Asylum Network who was willing to evaluate J-H- in support of her claim to legal protection in the US.
Based on their experiences as advocates for immigrants, Kathleen and Erin elaborate on the type of concern expressed by Officer Dobson:
Past experience with campaigns of immigration raids has shown that legally present immigrants and US family members are more reluctant to take part in civic activities, visit family members, or seek medical help for which they are legally entitled if doing so exposes them to potential questioning and arrest. If SB 1070 had been in force last year, fear of accessing community services may have prevented J-H- from seeking the legal help she needed to obtain asylum in the US. A life of fear and insecurity could have added to the physical and mental suffering she endured due to FGM.
SB 1070 is scheduled to be enacted on July 29. Earlier in July, the US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the state of Arizona to invalidate SB 1070. This past week, a coalition of civil rights groups filed a separate lawsuit to block enforcement of SB 1070 while its constitutionality is assessed in the DOJ lawsuit.
Further Reading
- DETENTION AND DEPORTATION CONSEQUENCES OF ARIZONA IMMIGRATION LAW (SB 1070) (Detention Watch).
Only an Expert
Picked up the new Laurie Anderson record yesterday. Most of the record is too beautiful for me to talk about in any way that would be interesting. This is work at a level where moods, emotions, ideas are conveyed with individual word choices and the sounds around them. So to share my enthusiasm a little more directly, I offer this Laurie Anderson performance at Lincoln Center of the song “Only an Expert,” which appears on the record. It is searingly funny and quite direct in what it talks about. Enjoy.
Darling, It’s Alright
Hot new video from Francis and the Lights. It’s best if you watch it full screen.
Shock Treatment, Suspicious Blacks and Oscar Grant
(Photo: Thomas Hawk)
I have been trying to wrap my mind around BART police officer Johannes Mehserle’s defense in the shooting death of 22-year-old black man Oscar Grant.
Mehserle’s supposed weapon confusion is at the heart of why he was not convicted of voluntary manslaughter, let alone of second degree murder. The underlying logic of the defense seems to be that drawing the gun was an illegitimate, death dealing mistake but tasing Oscar Grant would have been a legitimate course of action.
A photo of Mehserle and surveillance video of his fellow officer Tony Pirone show each of them brandishing their tasers during the events prior to the shooting on the BART platform.
We are to suppose, then, that when police arrive on a scene where fighting that they have not observed has reportedly occurred it is acceptable to brandish weapons to gain compliance from black men. We are to suppose it is proper procedure to threaten any young black man with weapons if he is suspected of having been fighting prior to the arrival of the police.
We are also to suppose that tasers are not themselves lethal weapons. Electronic Village has compiled a list 84 documented taser death incidents since the beginning of 2009. In addition to a growing body of evidence that tasers are unpredictably lethal, there is evidence that they are over-used by law enforcement and that law enforcement officers tase blacks disproportionately.
A 2008 Amnesty International study found that 90% of those struck by tasers since 2001 were unarmed. Overall, among the 2009-2010 victims on the Electronic Village list, 38% were black, though blacks are only 13% of the total US population. Furthermore, tasers seem to be especially problematic in California. According to the Amnesty study, California and Florida have the highest taser death rates in the country. Among the taser deaths recorded by Electronic Village, twenty-oneâor 25%âoccurred in California.
The logic that legitimates using tasers, despite data such as above, is the logic of fear. Adam Serwer recently put it this way:
To convict on the higher charge of voluntary manslaughter, the prosecution would have had to prove that Mehserle’s fear of Grant and his friends was ‘unreasonable.’ It decided the crime was involuntary. In other words, Mehserle’s fear? That was reasonable.
Serwer provides broad historical context for America’s fear of black men, from Toussaint L’Overture to Oscar Grant. In the spirit of collaboration, I’d like to add some information to Adam’s history.
In Franklin County, Mississippi, May 1964, two black 19-year-old men, named Henry Dee and Charles Moore, were kidnapped, tortured and murdered by a band of Klansmen. The abductions and torture of Dee and Moore were preceded by a spate of similar kidnappings and beatings, at least 16 according to one set of government documents, all in the same small, southwest corner of Mississippi.
During that four month period, bands of Klansmen ambushed black men coming home from work at night or lured them out to deserted roads on false pretenses, brought them out into the woods or oil fields and whipped them and interrogated them. Were their victimsâor other blacks the victims knewâmembers of the NAACP, the Klan wanted to know?
It appears that until May 2, 1964, all of the victims of these abductions got away alive; some have lived with effects of severe injuries the rest of their lives. What brought the Dee-Moore abductions to a deathly end?
There is no evidence that the instigator of the Dee-Moore kidnapping and beatings was involved in the other incidents from early 1964. But when he targeted Henry Dee, he was not worrying about the the NAACP. When Klansmen threw Henry Dee and Charles Moore on the ground, tied them up and beat them with bean poles, the torturers asked the 19-year-olds about a black insurrection instead of about the NAACP.
Henry Dee had recently been to Chicago to visit relatives there. He came back to Mississippi wearing a do-rag and exhibiting other trappings of northern city life. This, with rumors that had started circulating that black Muslims from Chicago were bringing guns into Mississippi to arm local blacks, made Dee an embodiment of much that the Klan feared and had mobilized to suppress. The Klansmen were so intent on getting Dee that when his friend Moore joined him on the street and the two started hitchhiking together from Meadeville to Natchez, the Klansmen took Moore along for the ride and killed them both.
The Dee-Moore case is rare. Unlike scores of other cold cases from the Civil Rights Era, after 43 years, it was finally brought to court. One of the Klansmen involved went to prison in 2007 on federal kidnapping charges for his role in the murders, and, more recently, Franklin County settled a landmark civil suit with the families. Yet, even here, with significant closure for the victims’ families and government being held to account for collusion with the Klan, no perpetrator has been charged with murder and no government official has admitted to any wrongdoing.
In this history of fear, self-possessed black men, who advocate for their rights and are willing to defend themselves when attacked (or are suspected of these things), are met with pathological, frenzied violence. We have not faced this history or held past perpetrators accountable. Until we do, we will continue to have Oscar Grants and we will continue to lack the will for adequate justice.
(A note of thanks to David Ridgen, who made factual corrections and shared his original research for the passages on Henry Dee and Charles Moore.)
Prison-Based Gerrymandering Ends in Delaware
Got this happy news in my inbox today, from the Prison Policy Initiative, about an important victory in the movement to end prison-based gerry mandering:
On June 30, the Delaware Senate passed a bill ensuring that incarcerated persons will be counted as residents of their home addresses when new state and local legislative districts are drawn in Delaware. The bill previously passed in the House, and is now awaiting Governor Jack Markellâs signature.
The U.S. Census currently counts incarcerated people as residents of the prison location. When states use Census counts to draw legislative districts, they unintentionally enhance the weight of a vote cast in districts that contain prisons at the expense of all other districts in the state. Delaware is the second state to correct this problem and adjust Census data to count incarcerated persons at their home address, joining Maryland which enacted a bill in April. Similar legislation is pending in New York.
âDelawareâs legislation recognizes that prison-based gerrymandering is a problem of fairness in redistricting. All districts â some far more than others â send people to prison, but only some districts have large prisons. Counting incarcerated people as residents of the prison distorts the principle of one person, one vote, and we applaud the Delaware General Assembly for enacting this common-sense solution,â said Peter Wagner, Executive Director of the Prison Policy Initiative.
The problem is national as well. One state assembly district in New York includes 7% prisoners; a state house district in Texas includes 12% prisoners; and 15% of one Montana state house district consists of prisoners imported from other parts of the state. Prison-based gerrymandering was not a serious problem when the prison population was tiny, but the 2010 Census will find five times as many people in prison as it did just three decades ago.
âThe Delaware legislature has taken a much-needed step to reflect incarcerated populations in a more accurate way. Delawareâs action should help pave the way for other states to end the distortions caused by counting incarcerated persons in the wrong place,â said Brenda Wright, Director of the Democracy Program at Demos.
The legislation, passed as HB384, applies only to redistricting and would not affect federal or state funding distributions.
What is prison-based gerrymandering, you ask? Here’s a little video to help elucidate the subject. That’s Prison Policy Initiative’s executive director, Peter Wagner, doing the Bob Dylan thing with the cue cards.
A Little More Justice in Mississippi
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. Â 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 Shellâs 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 Klanâs 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.â
“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
Thomas Moore, phone interview by Ben Greenberg, June 22, 2010 [7:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadDocuments
- 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)
Edgar 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. âBG]
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 wasnât 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.
âAlmighty God ⌠is listening and is recording your acts, thoughts and deeds. One by one you will give account to him,â Killen wrote in a six-page letter obtained by The Clarion-Ledger from a Klansman. His lawyer confirmed the letter is indeed Killenâs.
District Attorney Mark Duncan, who along with Attorney General Jim Hood prosecuted Killen, responded, âI donât have any trouble standing before God with my role in it.â
In 2005, a Neshoba County jury convicted Killen, now 85, on three counts of manslaughter for his role in the Klanâs 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. âYou had all the news media that helped indict me for murder on three counts, which you had no legal evidence,â he wrote. âAll your grand jury heard was slick tongue talk from a couple of politicians.â
Sally Beam, one of those grand jurors, said thatâs not correct.
All the evidence led back to Killen, she said. âWe were not out to get him, but he was the one every order went out from. The fact heâs still trying to blame somebody else just tells me his heart is still not in the right place.
âHeâs still trying to cover up what needs to be exposed. If I were Edgar Ray Killen, Iâd be thinking about my maker and where Iâm going to be when I die. Heâs a preacher. He knows about heaven and hell.â
Killen says mobster Gregory Scarpa Sr., pistol whipped âtestimonyâ from from Clayton Lewis, a defense attorney in the 1967 federal conspiracy trial of suspects in the civil rights workersâ 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 Klanâs 1966 killing of Vernon Dahmer.
Killen said the FBI paid Scarpa $30,000 in reward money â 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 heâs not surprised Killen invoked Godâs 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. âConvicted Klansmen have a special problem with justice,â he said. âTheir âcrimesâ were, in their minds, righteous. They were aimed at specific targets â meddlesome Yankees.â
In Killenâs mind, he said, âIt will always be 1865.â
In the letter, Killen says he read many hidden Justice Department files. âI 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,â he says. âI 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.â
Exactly who he refuses to betray he didnât 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 âdid jobsâ for Eastland around the country.
Killen said in his letter he had traveled to âmost major cities in America.â
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 Killenâs 2005 trial. Thornton said Killen authorized him to release the letter and shared a note that expert Thomas Vastrick of Memphis identified as Killenâs handwriting.
Thornton, whose real name is Charles Denton, said he wants to see âthe scoundrels who railroaded this fine man pay up for their deceit.â
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 Killenâs lawyer âevery 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.â
Killen remains filled with venom, Hood said. âHate will eat up a personâs soul. As with all criminals I have had to prosecute, I still hold out hope that their souls will be redeemed.â
Killen has repeatedly referred to the three victims as communists â something the victimsâ families say isnât true.
Ben Chaney, whose brother James was among the victims, said after reading Killenâs letter, âI sort of feel bad for Mr. Killen because heâs losing. The fact is he refuses to look at reality.â
Killen needs to come clean, he said. âGod knows what he did, and he knows he did something contrary to what God wants. The truth will set him free.â
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