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3 年 ago
in Community Labor United: The People’s Hurricane Relief Fund And Oversight Coalition on Hungry Blues
How neat! Thank you so much for the opportunity to help out in this way. This is a fascinating lady - I saw her on tv and she is a mover and shaker. My sister is in the current path of Rita and I hope and pray for her and others for their protection. Again, thanks! Susan
3 年 ago
in Adlena McKinley Hamlett: “I know that she, like Mrs. Keglar, fought for the right to vote and this is why she died.” on Hungry Blues
The quote at the top is from Adlina's granddaughter, Nina Black Zachary. "I know that she, Mrs. Keglar, fought for the right to vote and that is why she died."
thanks,susan
thanks,susan
3 年 ago
in Stacking The Deck With Roberts: The Right Wing Plot Against Voting Rights on Hungry Blues
There is a very human side to the voting rights act that I would like to share. For the past two years while living on the grounds of Parchman Penitentiary (where my husband has been the regional director of mental health for Mississippi's prisons), I've spent my time learning and writing about Mississippi civil rights.
The end result has been two books, one of them 680 pages, the largest book that I've ever written. Twice during this period, I've come upon stories that have made me pause and cry. The first was the story of Medgar Evers, his engaging life and his untimely death.
The second story revolved around two older black women from a small, isolated and hateful county. This story was about their bravery, honor, dignity when they fought for the right to vote and ultimately faced the Klan.
It is an important story that underlies what the voting rights issue is really all about and why none of us can turn our heads the other way. This is the story of Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett.
For over forty years, relatives living in separate parts of the country worked to learn what happened to these two women after they were told Keglar and Hamlett were killed in a car accident.
Now that the story of their torture, death and mutilation has been determined, a Michigan congressional representative will soon call for an investigation of the deaths. These words come from Adlena Hamlett's granddaughter:
“Adlena McKinley Hamlett was my grandmother. She had picked me to be a civil rights lawyer when I was a young girl – she and my grandfather, both – but my mother was afraid I would be in danger and so I became a professional secretary and then a teacher.
“My grandmother came from a family with land, and that was very important to them. After the Civil War, her mother Julia McKinley was given forty acres and a mule when she was freed. I have a quilt that my great – grandmother made. Her family acquired more land over the years and my grandmother was born and raised on their dairy farm near Scobey, Mississippi in 1888, where I am from, too.
“Grandmother Adlena was killed when she was 78 years-old outside of Greenwood, Mississippi when she and her close friend Birdia Keglar were forced off the road on their way home from testifying in Jackson about jobs and voting. Months earlier, they testified in support of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; both were hanged in effigy and warned they would be killed if they continued.
"I know this because my cousin’s wife told me what he learned from others who knew them and I saw her body in the funeral home in Charleston.
"At Fox Funeral Home in Charleston, the manager told us that only one family member could view my grandmother’s body. My brother and I went into the room together and something was very wrong with her head and her arms. Her head seemed too small.My brother had to tell me that she had been decapitated and that her arms were severed from her body. There were knife marks on her face.
"There was a horrible expression frozen on her face and one of my aunts started screaming when she saw her, later on. I know that my brother examined her body, but he would not let me touch her. I have never let this go.
"Sometimes others tell me to give up the search for answers about my grandmother’s death because it happened too many years ago. But I know that she, like Mrs. Keglar, fought for the right to vote and this is why she died.
"One day when I was a young girl she took me with her to the courthouse in Charleston. She asked for a ballot and someone at the courthouse took it away and tore it up. She told me not to worry, because some day this would change and I would be able to vote.
"I remember my grandmother Adlena and sometimes I still want to cry.”
?Nina Black Zachary, 2005
(from "Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, 2005)
None of the men were removed from their car that was forced from the road in Sidon, a small town below Greenwood, Mississippi, and a known Klan stronghold.
The women, though, were marched to the edge of the woods where they were tortured, killed and mutilated in the style of the White Knights of the Klu Klux Klan of Mississippi.
There was never an official police report; no one was charged in these deaths. "It was a car accident," their children and grandchildren were told. . .
The end result has been two books, one of them 680 pages, the largest book that I've ever written. Twice during this period, I've come upon stories that have made me pause and cry. The first was the story of Medgar Evers, his engaging life and his untimely death.
The second story revolved around two older black women from a small, isolated and hateful county. This story was about their bravery, honor, dignity when they fought for the right to vote and ultimately faced the Klan.
It is an important story that underlies what the voting rights issue is really all about and why none of us can turn our heads the other way. This is the story of Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett.
For over forty years, relatives living in separate parts of the country worked to learn what happened to these two women after they were told Keglar and Hamlett were killed in a car accident.
Now that the story of their torture, death and mutilation has been determined, a Michigan congressional representative will soon call for an investigation of the deaths. These words come from Adlena Hamlett's granddaughter:
“Adlena McKinley Hamlett was my grandmother. She had picked me to be a civil rights lawyer when I was a young girl – she and my grandfather, both – but my mother was afraid I would be in danger and so I became a professional secretary and then a teacher.
“My grandmother came from a family with land, and that was very important to them. After the Civil War, her mother Julia McKinley was given forty acres and a mule when she was freed. I have a quilt that my great – grandmother made. Her family acquired more land over the years and my grandmother was born and raised on their dairy farm near Scobey, Mississippi in 1888, where I am from, too.
“Grandmother Adlena was killed when she was 78 years-old outside of Greenwood, Mississippi when she and her close friend Birdia Keglar were forced off the road on their way home from testifying in Jackson about jobs and voting. Months earlier, they testified in support of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; both were hanged in effigy and warned they would be killed if they continued.
"I know this because my cousin’s wife told me what he learned from others who knew them and I saw her body in the funeral home in Charleston.
"At Fox Funeral Home in Charleston, the manager told us that only one family member could view my grandmother’s body. My brother and I went into the room together and something was very wrong with her head and her arms. Her head seemed too small.My brother had to tell me that she had been decapitated and that her arms were severed from her body. There were knife marks on her face.
"There was a horrible expression frozen on her face and one of my aunts started screaming when she saw her, later on. I know that my brother examined her body, but he would not let me touch her. I have never let this go.
"Sometimes others tell me to give up the search for answers about my grandmother’s death because it happened too many years ago. But I know that she, like Mrs. Keglar, fought for the right to vote and this is why she died.
"One day when I was a young girl she took me with her to the courthouse in Charleston. She asked for a ballot and someone at the courthouse took it away and tore it up. She told me not to worry, because some day this would change and I would be able to vote.
"I remember my grandmother Adlena and sometimes I still want to cry.”
?Nina Black Zachary, 2005
(from "Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, 2005)
None of the men were removed from their car that was forced from the road in Sidon, a small town below Greenwood, Mississippi, and a known Klan stronghold.
The women, though, were marched to the edge of the woods where they were tortured, killed and mutilated in the style of the White Knights of the Klu Klux Klan of Mississippi.
There was never an official police report; no one was charged in these deaths. "It was a car accident," their children and grandchildren were told. . .
3 年 ago
in A Few More Mississippi News Items on Hungry Blues
CC, FCG, CCA and finally CCC ... The history behind this terroristic vegetable soup that has grown from "a cup" to a "kettle" is fascinating and frightening ...
Shortly after the first Citizens Councils or CC (home grown by Robert "Tut" Patterson of Itta Bena) became a reality, the New York Post sent a reporter into the Deep South on a fact-finding mission. Reporter Stan Optowsky spoke plainly in his assessment, calling the Councils “a loose federation [with the] avowed purpose [to] battle the principle and practice of integration, and to crush all – the Negro and white – who dare advocate the colored man’s rights.”
After spending five weeks doing research, the reporter declared the “actual purpose was to elect the ‘right’ candidate; to maintain cheap labor; to eliminate a gnawing business competitor; to protect a shaky job; and to make ‘a few fast bucks.’”
Help in growing Citizens Councils soon came from Patterson’s “neighbor,” Senator James O. Eastland, who wanted to grow an even larger organization for himself. In the summer of 1955, Eastland announced it was “essential that a nation-wide organization be set up” to “mobilize and organize public opinion” throughout the United States in order to combat school desegregation.
The senator said that a “great crusade” would be required to fight the NAACP, CIO, and “all the conscienceless pressure groups who are attempting our destruction.”
And so within a month of Eastland’s statement, the Federation for Constitutional Government (FCG), a short-lived organization, was formed in Memphis. Representatives from twelve Southern states came together with the support of Eastland, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, former Governor Fielding Wright of Mississippi, U. S. Representative John Bell Williams of Mississippi, and other politicians.
Patterson, Judge Thomas Brady and William J. Simmons were elected to positions on the executive committee. John U. Barr of Louisiana was selected president, and it was Eastland’s intention that the Federation would “coordinate” the work of the Citizens Councils and several other organizations.
Many members of the Citizens Councils did not share this view, however, and in April 1956, sixty-five representatives from Citizens Councils in eleven Southern states secretly met to form their own “overseer,” the Citizens Councils of America. The following October, CCA selected Patterson as secretary.
From 1954 to 1989, Patterson spent his time growing the Citizens Councils through the CCA, as he traveled thousands of miles around the Southeastern states to meet with members and their leaders. As Council numbers grew to over 300,000 members, Eastland helped out, by calling on state governments to fund the movement.
It would be Patterson who with Gordon Lee Baum co-morphed the Councils to their current neo-nazi existence as the CCC or Conservative Citizens Councils in 1985. Baum had been a regional director in the first Citizens Councils.Patterson remains actively involved in CCC, and still writes for the organization’s journal, The Informer.
An Intelligence Report from the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that names of CCC members are not public. But after collecting the names of 175 members mentioned in council publications and elsewhere, the Report “was able to document ties to racist groups of 17 of those members — almost 10 percent of the total.” Claiming 15,000 members in 1999, CCC was in the news when Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott landed in hot water after speaking before the group. Lott spoke again in 2005, as various state legislators and judges were scheduled to attend CCC meetings.
Meanwhile, "a significant number of members have been linked to unabashedly racist groups including the Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; the National Association for the Advancement of White People; the America First Party; and the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Others have ties to militant ‘Patriot’ organizations such as the extreme-right-wing Populist Party and David Duke.”
Patterson is a tough old bird. I spoke to him last fall and learned that at Mississippi State, after catching a long pass for a touchdown, Patterson assisted in the defeat of Alabama, becoming the first state team to win the Southeastern Conference Championship.
After graduation, he entered the military, was assigned to the British Royal Air Force, and was later quartered with paratroop officers from the 82nd and 101st airborne divisions. At the War’s end, Patterson was discharged as a Major; while in Europe he had made a total of 16 parachute jumps in all of the major campaigns.
In the fall of 1951, a polio epidemic struck Sunflower County. Patterson came down with the virus and was sent to the isolation hospital in Vicksburg where he remained for eighteen days. “Neither my family nor anyone else was allowed to visit. I lay on a board and could feel the paralysis settling into my legs and arms." Patterson finally returned home and gradually regained most of his strength “until no one but me could tell that I was slightly crippled. Of the nine men who were in my ward in Vicksburg, I am the only one who ever walked again or who lived past a few years.”
When “Black Monday” came, Patterson says that he “knew as did most white Southerners that our schools would be destroyed and would be absolutely unacceptable for white children to attend.” At the time, Sunflower County had a black population of about 80 percent. Patterson spoke with “a number of Indianola’s leading citizens and we decided to organize to try to protect our schools and our children.”
Patterson’s sudden interest in this topic was not new. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) noted in 1956 that Patterson had previously written for anti-Semitic publications, including the National Renaissance Bulletin. He told representatives of B’nai B’rith that if their ADL branded him as anti-Semite, he would not deny it.
Patterson was elected executive secretary of the Association of Citizens Councils of Mississippi with an office in Winona. Within a year, the association moved headquarters to Greenwood. Word spread and the organization grew to the point “where we built a fine office building in Jackson and made it our State and National Headquarters.”
Many U. S. Congressmen and Senators plus local mayors, ministers, governors, and other officials were “on our side,” Patterson recalled. W. J. Simmons, [currently a B&B owner in Jackson] the son of a Jackson banking family, joined the movement and became “a valuable leader.... He is also a dear friend.” (Others say that Simmons stole Patterson's organization out from under him, leaving Patterson to do the footwork.)
Patterson claimed his successes in building the Councils so quickly came from years playing football: “I learned in football the team that makes the fewest mistakes wins.”
At the age of 84, the senior Mississippian used his thick wooden cane tip to tap out the framed certificates on his wall awarded after World War II and for Indianola’s Citizen of the Year. The mid-morning interview took place at his home office in Itta Bena, where a book on the Reich stood out on his mahogany desktop.
The Patterson home is set on a large lot next to a bayou. “We were able to purchase all of the land down to the water. It’s safer and no one can just move next door,” Patterson pointed out.
The conversation moved to the Pattersons’ children and their individual achievements. One daughter married a Moroccan – “Moroccans are like Europeans, you know. They have kings.”
Are the original Citizens Councils still in tact? Patterson said they are still meeting around the Delta. “People would be surprised,” he said with a quick grin.
Shortly after the first Citizens Councils or CC (home grown by Robert "Tut" Patterson of Itta Bena) became a reality, the New York Post sent a reporter into the Deep South on a fact-finding mission. Reporter Stan Optowsky spoke plainly in his assessment, calling the Councils “a loose federation [with the] avowed purpose [to] battle the principle and practice of integration, and to crush all – the Negro and white – who dare advocate the colored man’s rights.”
After spending five weeks doing research, the reporter declared the “actual purpose was to elect the ‘right’ candidate; to maintain cheap labor; to eliminate a gnawing business competitor; to protect a shaky job; and to make ‘a few fast bucks.’”
Help in growing Citizens Councils soon came from Patterson’s “neighbor,” Senator James O. Eastland, who wanted to grow an even larger organization for himself. In the summer of 1955, Eastland announced it was “essential that a nation-wide organization be set up” to “mobilize and organize public opinion” throughout the United States in order to combat school desegregation.
The senator said that a “great crusade” would be required to fight the NAACP, CIO, and “all the conscienceless pressure groups who are attempting our destruction.”
And so within a month of Eastland’s statement, the Federation for Constitutional Government (FCG), a short-lived organization, was formed in Memphis. Representatives from twelve Southern states came together with the support of Eastland, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, former Governor Fielding Wright of Mississippi, U. S. Representative John Bell Williams of Mississippi, and other politicians.
Patterson, Judge Thomas Brady and William J. Simmons were elected to positions on the executive committee. John U. Barr of Louisiana was selected president, and it was Eastland’s intention that the Federation would “coordinate” the work of the Citizens Councils and several other organizations.
Many members of the Citizens Councils did not share this view, however, and in April 1956, sixty-five representatives from Citizens Councils in eleven Southern states secretly met to form their own “overseer,” the Citizens Councils of America. The following October, CCA selected Patterson as secretary.
From 1954 to 1989, Patterson spent his time growing the Citizens Councils through the CCA, as he traveled thousands of miles around the Southeastern states to meet with members and their leaders. As Council numbers grew to over 300,000 members, Eastland helped out, by calling on state governments to fund the movement.
It would be Patterson who with Gordon Lee Baum co-morphed the Councils to their current neo-nazi existence as the CCC or Conservative Citizens Councils in 1985. Baum had been a regional director in the first Citizens Councils.Patterson remains actively involved in CCC, and still writes for the organization’s journal, The Informer.
An Intelligence Report from the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that names of CCC members are not public. But after collecting the names of 175 members mentioned in council publications and elsewhere, the Report “was able to document ties to racist groups of 17 of those members — almost 10 percent of the total.” Claiming 15,000 members in 1999, CCC was in the news when Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott landed in hot water after speaking before the group. Lott spoke again in 2005, as various state legislators and judges were scheduled to attend CCC meetings.
Meanwhile, "a significant number of members have been linked to unabashedly racist groups including the Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; the National Association for the Advancement of White People; the America First Party; and the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Others have ties to militant ‘Patriot’ organizations such as the extreme-right-wing Populist Party and David Duke.”
Patterson is a tough old bird. I spoke to him last fall and learned that at Mississippi State, after catching a long pass for a touchdown, Patterson assisted in the defeat of Alabama, becoming the first state team to win the Southeastern Conference Championship.
After graduation, he entered the military, was assigned to the British Royal Air Force, and was later quartered with paratroop officers from the 82nd and 101st airborne divisions. At the War’s end, Patterson was discharged as a Major; while in Europe he had made a total of 16 parachute jumps in all of the major campaigns.
In the fall of 1951, a polio epidemic struck Sunflower County. Patterson came down with the virus and was sent to the isolation hospital in Vicksburg where he remained for eighteen days. “Neither my family nor anyone else was allowed to visit. I lay on a board and could feel the paralysis settling into my legs and arms." Patterson finally returned home and gradually regained most of his strength “until no one but me could tell that I was slightly crippled. Of the nine men who were in my ward in Vicksburg, I am the only one who ever walked again or who lived past a few years.”
When “Black Monday” came, Patterson says that he “knew as did most white Southerners that our schools would be destroyed and would be absolutely unacceptable for white children to attend.” At the time, Sunflower County had a black population of about 80 percent. Patterson spoke with “a number of Indianola’s leading citizens and we decided to organize to try to protect our schools and our children.”
Patterson’s sudden interest in this topic was not new. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) noted in 1956 that Patterson had previously written for anti-Semitic publications, including the National Renaissance Bulletin. He told representatives of B’nai B’rith that if their ADL branded him as anti-Semite, he would not deny it.
Patterson was elected executive secretary of the Association of Citizens Councils of Mississippi with an office in Winona. Within a year, the association moved headquarters to Greenwood. Word spread and the organization grew to the point “where we built a fine office building in Jackson and made it our State and National Headquarters.”
Many U. S. Congressmen and Senators plus local mayors, ministers, governors, and other officials were “on our side,” Patterson recalled. W. J. Simmons, [currently a B&B owner in Jackson] the son of a Jackson banking family, joined the movement and became “a valuable leader.... He is also a dear friend.” (Others say that Simmons stole Patterson's organization out from under him, leaving Patterson to do the footwork.)
Patterson claimed his successes in building the Councils so quickly came from years playing football: “I learned in football the team that makes the fewest mistakes wins.”
At the age of 84, the senior Mississippian used his thick wooden cane tip to tap out the framed certificates on his wall awarded after World War II and for Indianola’s Citizen of the Year. The mid-morning interview took place at his home office in Itta Bena, where a book on the Reich stood out on his mahogany desktop.
The Patterson home is set on a large lot next to a bayou. “We were able to purchase all of the land down to the water. It’s safer and no one can just move next door,” Patterson pointed out.
The conversation moved to the Pattersons’ children and their individual achievements. One daughter married a Moroccan – “Moroccans are like Europeans, you know. They have kings.”
Are the original Citizens Councils still in tact? Patterson said they are still meeting around the Delta. “People would be surprised,” he said with a quick grin.
3 年 ago
in Let Justice Roll Down . . . on Hungry Blues
Oh, oh. This just in:
Civil rights groups cite concerns over Roberts
Question record on voting, busing
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | July 22, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. has a history of working to roll back government affirmative action and voting rights programs enacted to help minorities overcome the effects of past discrimination, leading some civil rights groups to eye him warily...
* * * *
L'est we forget ... This issue is coming up and if we mean business about civil rights, then our concern must be with voting rights, as well... since this is why so many of these murders occured during the 50s and 60s in the first place.
We need to let our illustrious senators know how we feel about this nominee.
Support of the Voting Rights Act reauthorization will be a critical issue in the next few years and we already know how Bush feels. We cannot afford to go backwards again. Mississippi can lead the way, for a change, if we let dear old Trent and Thad know how we feel starting now.
Civil rights groups cite concerns over Roberts
Question record on voting, busing
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | July 22, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. has a history of working to roll back government affirmative action and voting rights programs enacted to help minorities overcome the effects of past discrimination, leading some civil rights groups to eye him warily...
* * * *
L'est we forget ... This issue is coming up and if we mean business about civil rights, then our concern must be with voting rights, as well... since this is why so many of these murders occured during the 50s and 60s in the first place.
We need to let our illustrious senators know how we feel about this nominee.
Support of the Voting Rights Act reauthorization will be a critical issue in the next few years and we already know how Bush feels. We cannot afford to go backwards again. Mississippi can lead the way, for a change, if we let dear old Trent and Thad know how we feel starting now.
3 年 ago
in Let Justice Roll Down . . . on Hungry Blues
Next stop, Birdia Keglar, Adelina Hamlet and Sonny Boy (James) Keglar? Daisy Savage and grandson? Cleve McDowell? There are so many more. Meanwhile, what a great job, Donna - thanks to the entire team. We needed that!
4 年 ago
in “It was a terrible insult to him and to the families” on Hungry Blues
So now, what?
After Philadelphia, the collective unconscious closed their notebooks and left Mississippi for the next newsworthy battlegrounds. One hoped that Mississippi’s citizenry would wake up and put enormous pressure on the state’s attorney general to go after everyone else who killed Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman. But so far, it is not happening. The Mississippi culture would never allow it. Besides, "as long as we look better than we did before Killen was convicted, why start this mess all over again?" some were saying.
Last January 7, 2005 New York Times reporter Robert McFadden wrote on the upcoming Killen trial - "The most infamous unresolved case from America's civil rights struggle four decades ago." McFadden wrote that "After a frantic chase, [Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman] were caught and taken to an isolated spot on Rock Cut Road, where they were killed:
"Mr. Schwerner on Mr. Bowers's orders, and Mr. Chaney and Mr. Goodman because they were witnesses…Mr. Chaney was beaten to death, while Mr. Schwerner and Mr. Goodman were each shot once in the chest."
McFadden seemed to be working through the question that many keep asking: "Why only Killen?" The NYT reporter asked this of one law enforcement officer and was told
"We went ahead and got him [Killen] because he was high profile and we knew where he was." In other words, they went after Killen “because he was there.” So why not keep it up and go after the others now that Killen has been taken care of?
McFadden continued: "Mississippi has reopened some [other] old civil rights murder cases. In 1994, Byron de la Beckwith was convicted of the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers, a field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People."
This is true. Prosecutor Bobby DeLaughter did a good job. And in his book that he wrote about the Beckwith case, DeLaughter confirmed that others were involved in Medgar Evers death. (Something the black community already knew). But he brought no charges against anyone else. I write about this in Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited.
McFadden had more to write last January: "Efforts to bring about a trial for the murder of civil rights workers in Mississippi have been enhanced in recent years by the opening of the long-secret files of the State Sovereignty Commission, which was founded in 1956 to defend the state from "encroachment" by federal authorities.
"Before it was abolished in 1977, the commission monitored anyone suspected of promoting racial integration. Containing 87,000 names, the files detail a series of Klan killings in the 1960's, including those of Mr. Evers and Mr. Dahmer, as well as those of Mr. Schwerner, Mr. Chaney and Mr. Goodman."
Now we all know that a whole lot of those papers are missing. It was decided to take a few truckloads (what was left) out of the Commission's offices and post them on the Internet. And this was good. But what about all of the missing Sovereignty Commission papers? Who has them? Who threw them away? Has anyone even tried to look for these papers? Would this be too hard to do? Wouldn't there be more information in these missing files to help solve old murders? Wouldn't it have been the "worst" files that were pitched or hidden?
Erle Johnston, the most powerful Sovereignty Commission director, in his autobiography admitted to taking some of the papers home, and making sure they would never see the light of day? Has his house been searched? Any relatives still living? Kids with big garages?
A few cop cars out to the homes [estates] of John Satterfield, Senator "Slippery Jim" Eastland, and some of the others, including the Commission’s agents, would be a good start. And really not too hard to do. As for Killen, the easy part is over. Now it's time to get down and dirty. The best could be yet to come.
After Philadelphia, the collective unconscious closed their notebooks and left Mississippi for the next newsworthy battlegrounds. One hoped that Mississippi’s citizenry would wake up and put enormous pressure on the state’s attorney general to go after everyone else who killed Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman. But so far, it is not happening. The Mississippi culture would never allow it. Besides, "as long as we look better than we did before Killen was convicted, why start this mess all over again?" some were saying.
Last January 7, 2005 New York Times reporter Robert McFadden wrote on the upcoming Killen trial - "The most infamous unresolved case from America's civil rights struggle four decades ago." McFadden wrote that "After a frantic chase, [Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman] were caught and taken to an isolated spot on Rock Cut Road, where they were killed:
"Mr. Schwerner on Mr. Bowers's orders, and Mr. Chaney and Mr. Goodman because they were witnesses…Mr. Chaney was beaten to death, while Mr. Schwerner and Mr. Goodman were each shot once in the chest."
McFadden seemed to be working through the question that many keep asking: "Why only Killen?" The NYT reporter asked this of one law enforcement officer and was told
"We went ahead and got him [Killen] because he was high profile and we knew where he was." In other words, they went after Killen “because he was there.” So why not keep it up and go after the others now that Killen has been taken care of?
McFadden continued: "Mississippi has reopened some [other] old civil rights murder cases. In 1994, Byron de la Beckwith was convicted of the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers, a field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People."
This is true. Prosecutor Bobby DeLaughter did a good job. And in his book that he wrote about the Beckwith case, DeLaughter confirmed that others were involved in Medgar Evers death. (Something the black community already knew). But he brought no charges against anyone else. I write about this in Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited.
As DeLaughter prepared to take Beckwith into court, "once again," an FBI agent told DeLaughter that Beckwith spoke to his cellmate at Angola (where Beckwith was serving a short sentence for a bombing) about a Klansman named “Smith” who ordered the Evers hit. (DeLaughter admitted that he knew who "Smith" really was.)Hockman never testified – DeLaughter won without him, and knew that Hockman might present problems. So once again, the easiest route was taken and the more complicated issues ignored.. But as far as DeLaughter and others would say, they "got" their man. Case closed.
While cooperating with the FBI on another case, Lester Paul Hockman, incarcerated in an undisclosed federal facility, told Agent Daniel Lund that he possessed critical information regarding Beckwith’s assassination of Medgar Evers, according to DeLaughter.
Although Hockman had lived most of his life in another part of the country, his work as a carpenter had carried him to New Orleans, Louisiana. The report stated that in 1978 he was convicted and incarcerated for a shooting. Assigned for several weeks to clean the receiving unit at Angola Penitentiary, Hockman claimed to have met Beckwith, who was serving time on [a] New Orleans charge. Hockman told agent Lund that “Beckwith liked him because both were of German descent and talked freely to him.”
Beckwith, Hockman said, frequently spoke of a person he greatly admired named Smith [not the real name]. Hockman recalled seeing the name on some of the Klan literature that Beckwith kept in his cell. “Smith,” according to Hockman’s account, ordered the hit on Evers, “as well as several bombings that resulted in the deaths of innocent people.”
A member of DeLaughter’s trial team, “Crisco,” interviewed Hockman, who had convictions going back to 1945, at a federal penitentiary. Hockman confirmed to Crisco his statements in the FBI report “and then some,” DeLaughter wrote in “Never Too Late,” his personal account of his successful prosecution of Beckwith.
Asking about Evers, Hockman said Beckwith told him he “never did anything in those days without Mr. Smith’s okay.” Hockman also stated that Beckwith said “the governor of the state at the time, whoever that was, assisted him greatly. He said he had a lot of local support, too; that two individuals, policemen I believe, provided him with a good alibi that he was in town some distance away, and he spoke of that as a joke.”
McFadden had more to write last January: "Efforts to bring about a trial for the murder of civil rights workers in Mississippi have been enhanced in recent years by the opening of the long-secret files of the State Sovereignty Commission, which was founded in 1956 to defend the state from "encroachment" by federal authorities.
"Before it was abolished in 1977, the commission monitored anyone suspected of promoting racial integration. Containing 87,000 names, the files detail a series of Klan killings in the 1960's, including those of Mr. Evers and Mr. Dahmer, as well as those of Mr. Schwerner, Mr. Chaney and Mr. Goodman."
Now we all know that a whole lot of those papers are missing. It was decided to take a few truckloads (what was left) out of the Commission's offices and post them on the Internet. And this was good. But what about all of the missing Sovereignty Commission papers? Who has them? Who threw them away? Has anyone even tried to look for these papers? Would this be too hard to do? Wouldn't there be more information in these missing files to help solve old murders? Wouldn't it have been the "worst" files that were pitched or hidden?
Erle Johnston, the most powerful Sovereignty Commission director, in his autobiography admitted to taking some of the papers home, and making sure they would never see the light of day? Has his house been searched? Any relatives still living? Kids with big garages?
A few cop cars out to the homes [estates] of John Satterfield, Senator "Slippery Jim" Eastland, and some of the others, including the Commission’s agents, would be a good start. And really not too hard to do. As for Killen, the easy part is over. Now it's time to get down and dirty. The best could be yet to come.
4 年 ago
in “Nations were made by men, not by paper Constitutions and paper ballots” on Hungry Blues
Yes. The words in the the Five Point Action Program are unbelievable ... but it has not been that many years ago that Mississippi was under seige and these were the words of its leaders - people like John Satterfield of Yazoo City (twice head of the American Bar Association).
Satterfield used his powerful position in Mississippi's fight against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, using his title when signing off on racist literature (how embarrassing for the ABA) and helping to match up Mississippi with an old Nazi to fund the fight (Wycliffe Draper, The Pioneer Fund).
Frightening? Today Mississippi's U. S. senators, governor, numerous state legislators continue to meet with "the folks who brought us" the White Citizens Councils, the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission and the CCC - Council of Conservative Citizens - a clone of the earlier councils, now including open lines to Neo-Nazi's, Indentity Movement, New Confederacy Movement and every other hate group that Morris Dees tries to warn us about:
Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Reports, From Fall 2004, Issue 114... "five years later, Southern lawmakers are still meeting with the CCC ... no fewer than 38 federal, state and local elected officials who are still in office today have attended CCC events since 2000, most of them giving speeches to local chapters ..."
So think about this ... the CC Plan comes from the Citizens Councils days. If they sound scary, take a look at what the morphed CC (the CCC) is about these days ...and then realize that the man who started the CC, and then the CCC is still alive (Robert "Tut" Patterson) and still writing for his newest group.(He lives about 30 miles from my house!)
These folks are still around and they are making sure their organizations will live on. Afterall, they are the sons of their fathers. sk
(Not many Mississippians have looked at - or even know about - Sovereignty Commission files since Mississippi's media has dismissed the files, calling them "the works of keystone cops." Simply not true. These records are a critical piece of U. S. history and need to be read and written about)...
"Understand Mississippi, and you understand all of Democracy." Anonymous.
Satterfield used his powerful position in Mississippi's fight against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, using his title when signing off on racist literature (how embarrassing for the ABA) and helping to match up Mississippi with an old Nazi to fund the fight (Wycliffe Draper, The Pioneer Fund).
Frightening? Today Mississippi's U. S. senators, governor, numerous state legislators continue to meet with "the folks who brought us" the White Citizens Councils, the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission and the CCC - Council of Conservative Citizens - a clone of the earlier councils, now including open lines to Neo-Nazi's, Indentity Movement, New Confederacy Movement and every other hate group that Morris Dees tries to warn us about:
Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Reports, From Fall 2004, Issue 114... "five years later, Southern lawmakers are still meeting with the CCC ... no fewer than 38 federal, state and local elected officials who are still in office today have attended CCC events since 2000, most of them giving speeches to local chapters ..."
So think about this ... the CC Plan comes from the Citizens Councils days. If they sound scary, take a look at what the morphed CC (the CCC) is about these days ...and then realize that the man who started the CC, and then the CCC is still alive (Robert "Tut" Patterson) and still writing for his newest group.(He lives about 30 miles from my house!)
These folks are still around and they are making sure their organizations will live on. Afterall, they are the sons of their fathers. sk
(Not many Mississippians have looked at - or even know about - Sovereignty Commission files since Mississippi's media has dismissed the files, calling them "the works of keystone cops." Simply not true. These records are a critical piece of U. S. history and need to be read and written about)...
"Understand Mississippi, and you understand all of Democracy." Anonymous.
4 年 ago
in Mississippi Burning = Mississippi Cover Up? on Hungry Blues
This is such complexity to this case. I was looking at another source, the book regarding the paid FBI informant, Delmar Dennis, that was used by DeLaughter for the Medgar Evers trial, (Wm H. McIlhaney II, "Klandestine," (New York: Arlington House Publishers, 1975)
... and came up with this:
At the FBI's request, Dennis had reactivated his Klan membership. After Dennis (who became the FBI's paid informant) heard that the three were missing, "he recalled his thoughts…
"I began to see how it all fit together. First they had beaten the Negroes at the meeting and then burned their church down. If that wasn't enough to get Schwerner over to investigate I didn't know what would. I later learned that a young Negro boy had recognized one of the Philadelphia Klansmen who had taken part in the beatings. That same week he was killed in a mysterious car accident." p. 28, cites p. 8 of the Dennis manuscript
"By November much talk of the triple murder of June 21 was already circulating among Klansmen. Dennis heard some of this talk and was able to relay it to the agents with whom he worked. In one conversation, he heard James Jordan and Neshoba County deputy sheriff Cecil Price discuss the killing of the Mississippi black youth, James Chaney. Before Jordan shot Chaney to death, Price had hit the boy in the head with a blackjack. Price told Delmar that Jordan was the only man who knew that. This statement was important when Jordan claimed several years later that he had not witnessed the killings of the boys, but had been elsewhere nearby when they were taken out of their car and shot." (p. 34)
Note how this differs from Dr. David Spain's examination notes.
Then, according to Klandestine's author, during the federal government's trial ...
"Jordan took the stand Thursday afternoon after Dennis' testimony. His testimony, along with a statement taken from Horace Doyle Barnette in November 1964, proved to be the most incriminating testimony presented in the entire trial.
"But the two statements did not coincide in every particular. Jordan had lied abut his participation in the shooting. Naturally he would not confess that he had murdered Chaney. He said the he served as "a lookout" when the trie were killed and did not actually sitness the shooting.
"Before Judge Cox would admit the Barnette statement, he bowed to objections by the defense attorneys, who charged that the confession would be prejudicial to the other defendants. The import of Cox's actions wasd to strike the names of all the accused in the case with the exception of Barnette and Jordan.
"The Barnette statement placed Jordan right at the scene of the crime and charged that he did, in fact, kill Chaney. One uncensored portion of the statement said:
"Schwerner fell to the left so that he was lying alongside the road. Goodman spun around and fell back toward the bank in back. At this time, Jim Jordan said, "Save one for me." He then got out and got Chaney out. I remember Chaney backing up, facing the road and standing on the bank on the other side of the ditch and Jordan stood in the middle of the road and shot him. I do not remember how many time Jordan shot. Jordan then said, "You didn't leave me anything but a nigger, but at least I killed me a nigger."
"The Barnette statement concluded the case for the prosecution." (p. 87-88)
Still more ...
"The defense launched its attack late Friday afternoon. One Al Keene took the stand and charged that Jordan had admitted he actually killed all three of the civil rights workers. Keene, a resident of Mississippi City on the Gulf coast, said that Jordan lived with him and his wife in 1964.
"This was when Jordan supposedly described the Neshoba killings. Defense attorneys then began examining a long list of witnesses ..." (p. 88)
"Just before the case was turned over to the jury, the prosecutor, John Doar, surprised the court by requesting a not-guilty verdict against Travis Barnette. Apparently Doar felt that the government had not built the proper case against Barnette." (p. 89)
... and came up with this:
At the FBI's request, Dennis had reactivated his Klan membership. After Dennis (who became the FBI's paid informant) heard that the three were missing, "he recalled his thoughts…
"I began to see how it all fit together. First they had beaten the Negroes at the meeting and then burned their church down. If that wasn't enough to get Schwerner over to investigate I didn't know what would. I later learned that a young Negro boy had recognized one of the Philadelphia Klansmen who had taken part in the beatings. That same week he was killed in a mysterious car accident." p. 28, cites p. 8 of the Dennis manuscript
"By November much talk of the triple murder of June 21 was already circulating among Klansmen. Dennis heard some of this talk and was able to relay it to the agents with whom he worked. In one conversation, he heard James Jordan and Neshoba County deputy sheriff Cecil Price discuss the killing of the Mississippi black youth, James Chaney. Before Jordan shot Chaney to death, Price had hit the boy in the head with a blackjack. Price told Delmar that Jordan was the only man who knew that. This statement was important when Jordan claimed several years later that he had not witnessed the killings of the boys, but had been elsewhere nearby when they were taken out of their car and shot." (p. 34)
Note how this differs from Dr. David Spain's examination notes.
Then, according to Klandestine's author, during the federal government's trial ...
"Jordan took the stand Thursday afternoon after Dennis' testimony. His testimony, along with a statement taken from Horace Doyle Barnette in November 1964, proved to be the most incriminating testimony presented in the entire trial.
"But the two statements did not coincide in every particular. Jordan had lied abut his participation in the shooting. Naturally he would not confess that he had murdered Chaney. He said the he served as "a lookout" when the trie were killed and did not actually sitness the shooting.
"Before Judge Cox would admit the Barnette statement, he bowed to objections by the defense attorneys, who charged that the confession would be prejudicial to the other defendants. The import of Cox's actions wasd to strike the names of all the accused in the case with the exception of Barnette and Jordan.
"The Barnette statement placed Jordan right at the scene of the crime and charged that he did, in fact, kill Chaney. One uncensored portion of the statement said:
"Schwerner fell to the left so that he was lying alongside the road. Goodman spun around and fell back toward the bank in back. At this time, Jim Jordan said, "Save one for me." He then got out and got Chaney out. I remember Chaney backing up, facing the road and standing on the bank on the other side of the ditch and Jordan stood in the middle of the road and shot him. I do not remember how many time Jordan shot. Jordan then said, "You didn't leave me anything but a nigger, but at least I killed me a nigger."
"The Barnette statement concluded the case for the prosecution." (p. 87-88)
Still more ...
"The defense launched its attack late Friday afternoon. One Al Keene took the stand and charged that Jordan had admitted he actually killed all three of the civil rights workers. Keene, a resident of Mississippi City on the Gulf coast, said that Jordan lived with him and his wife in 1964.
"This was when Jordan supposedly described the Neshoba killings. Defense attorneys then began examining a long list of witnesses ..." (p. 88)
"Just before the case was turned over to the jury, the prosecutor, John Doar, surprised the court by requesting a not-guilty verdict against Travis Barnette. Apparently Doar felt that the government had not built the proper case against Barnette." (p. 89)
4 年 ago
in “Mississippi in 2005 is protecting white, racist murderers” on Hungry Blues
Then I ran into this: Bill Minor's Sunday in-depth feature on the "Christian Militant organization" dba White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan."As Christians, we are disposed to kindness, generosity, affection and humility in our dealings with others." "As militants, we are disposed to the use of physical force against our enemies," (asserts the "bible" of the white Knights).
"For security, WKKKK document each local unit must maintain a squad of at least eight well-armed men, each man with a minimum of 50 rounds of ammunition."
* * *
Holy &*^%! Sort of leaves me thinking that the only people who would recognize the WKKKK as "peaceful" would have some inside knowledge that the rest of us have failed to recognize.
"For security, WKKKK document each local unit must maintain a squad of at least eight well-armed men, each man with a minimum of 50 rounds of ammunition."
* * *
Holy &*^%! Sort of leaves me thinking that the only people who would recognize the WKKKK as "peaceful" would have some inside knowledge that the rest of us have failed to recognize.
4 年 ago
in “Mississippi in 2005 is protecting white, racist murderers” on Hungry Blues
History Repetitious?
Sovereignty Commission Online: "SCR ID # 6-37-0-12-1-1-1 "
Deja Vu All Over Again ..
Back in 1967 at the trial of those "peaceful" guys who murdered SC&G, reporter W. F. Minor of the Times-Picayune in New Orleans commented that Sam Bowers' attorneys found themselves in the position of having to defend the Klan as a "Christian group" and Bowers "as a man of peace and nonviolence."
Now I just wonder where Philadelphia's former mayor last week came up with his characterization of those "good ol' boys"?
Do you suppose he flips through old Sovereignty Commission files while he's fishin'?
Sovereignty Commission Online: "SCR ID # 6-37-0-12-1-1-1 "
Deja Vu All Over Again ..
Back in 1967 at the trial of those "peaceful" guys who murdered SC&G, reporter W. F. Minor of the Times-Picayune in New Orleans commented that Sam Bowers' attorneys found themselves in the position of having to defend the Klan as a "Christian group" and Bowers "as a man of peace and nonviolence."
Now I just wonder where Philadelphia's former mayor last week came up with his characterization of those "good ol' boys"?
Do you suppose he flips through old Sovereignty Commission files while he's fishin'?
4 年 ago
in Open Letter To Leesha Faulkner, re: “Deep in my heart I do believe there is justice” on Hungry Blues
"The potbellied coppers shook hands all around, with the hard-hats and red-necks who came into town.
And they swore that the murderers soon would be found, and they laughed as they spat their tobacco."
(Tom Paxon, "Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney")
Mississippians need to strive for "more than a measure" of reconcilliation. Thousands of murders of black people speak for themselves. Whenever truth is inserted into the Mississippi Story, it seems that many run for cover (so they won't be exposed) or else try to "represent" Mississippi in a better light.
Trent Lott, at least, isn't so hypocritical that when given the chance he continues to keep the Mississippi spin going. (Does anti-anti lynching equate to pro-lynching? Someone help me, I'm confused).
If a person decides to be the "negotiator" then I do believe they are responsible for what is negotiated. Personally, I'd rather see truth win than just another spin.
* * *
This morning, I was doing some research on the "autopsy" of James Chaney. A New York pathologist came in to examine his body and ended up being reported to the Sovereignty Commission by a Jackson physician ("Dr. Featherstone") as unethical.
The pressure on Mrs. Chaney to refuse permission had been tremendous, Spain wrote. "Philadelphia was against it. Without her, we would never see the body - the authorities in Philadelphia seemed decidedly unfavorable to a second medical examination."
As he was waiting for a decision, Dr. Spain wrote for Ramparts magazine (a Catholic publication) that he leafed through a file of Mississippi reports from field teams of the Medical Committee for Human Rights:
"I had only the stomach to read two of them. The first report described extended treatment given a young negro civil rights wowrker for fifteen or twenty burns scattered all over his body.
"He had been stopped by police in a small Mississippi town for questioning, and while they questioned him they jabbed lighted cigarettes into his flesh. the burns weren't treated, and were ulcerous and infected when the medical volunteers found the boy.
"In another Mississippi town, a medical report said, [the town] had activated a local statute requiring any 'stranger' entering the town to register at police headquarters - as if he were entering a foreign country. The youth in the report had registered, but a policeman insisted that the boy come to the station to "check" his compliance with the statute.
"The boy's name was found on the books. The officer then told him to "run along," and in the same breath swung his billy club into the boy's groin with such force that the youth passed out. Surgery was later necessary to evacuate a blood clot (larger than an orange) created by the blow."
Spain wrote that he was too depressed to read further. "I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of these reports. After conversations with physicians who have lived in Mississippi, I believe that incidents of this nature - with varying degrees of brutality - go on regularly and relentlessly every day of the week, and are too frequent to be considered 'newsworthy.'"
Dr. Spain was finally allowed to examine the young Chaney's corpse, with three Ole Miss physicians present:
"I was immediately struck by how slight and frail this young man was - a thin boy with tender skin. I looked at his wrist, the one that was reported broken in the unofficial examination, and I couldn't find the bullet hole that the newspapers mentioned.
"The wrist was broken, alright. Bones were smashed so badly that his wrist must have been literally flapping when he was carried. But there was no indication of any bullet hole.
"I looked up at the three doctors opposite me. Their faces were stone. I motioned to the wrist - I asked where the bullet hole was.
"One of the stone figures facing me offered a mumbled explanation, something about how Chaney' hand had been across his chest when the first examination was made and the examiner must have mistaken the bullet holes in his chest for one in the hand.
"I looked at him in amazement, but our eyes never met. During the remainder of the examination, not another word was spoken."
Spain noticed that...Chaney's jaw was "completely shattered, split vertically, from some tremendous force" ...that he "had been beaten in an unhuman fashion. The blows that had so terribly shattered his bone - I surmised he must have been beaten with chains, or a pipe - were in themselves sufficient to cause death.
"It was...impossible to say if he had died before he was shot- the bullets had been removed in the first autopsy, and the bullet tracks had been carefully excised so I could not trace the path of the bullets."
Further, the skull was crushed from another direct blow..."I could barely believe the destruction to these frail young bones.
"In my twenty-five years as a pathologist and medical examiner, I have never seen bones so severely shattered, except in tremendously high speed accidents or airplane crashes.
"It was obvious to any first-year medical student that this boy had been beaten to a pulp."
* * *
Over the weekend, I had the opportunity of meeting C.W. Robberson at THE memorial service who told me that Mississippi is just hard for outsiders to understand. She, herself, is often embarrassed, she admitted, by how some white faculty at Ole Miss talk about blacks when only Mississippi white folks are around. She spoke of a Negerian attorney who applied for a federally funded spot with a NOAH-funded project.
The department chair decided against him (even though the rest of the faculty voted for him). And that was that! One woman faculty member argued with the chairman and eventually left the program out of disgust and concern for her own career, C. W. said.
That's sad. Maybe Ole Miss could use some internal "negotiating" itself rather than sending out its minions to fix the "problems" in Philadelphia and elsewhere.
When his Mississippi job was completed, Dr. Spain returned home. "I felt an irrational, immediate urge to get out of Mississippi the fastest way possible. The first plane out went the wrong way from New York - to New Orleans - but I felt an indescribable relief when I boarded it and flew - I guess you could say I almost fled - from Jackson."
The "unofficial" autopsy report made shortly after the discovery of the bodies remained the only public document on the death, according Ramparts editors. "The Coroner's Jury of Neshoba County ruled several months after the murders that the caue or causes of death of the three boys could not be officially determined. Therefore the Coroner's Jury had no reason to ask the District Attorney to seek an indictment from the Grand Jury. An official autopsy report has never been made."
Do we wonder why there is so much community support in Philadelphia to take control of the annual memorial service for Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman...
"James Chaney your body exploded in pain,
and the beating they gave you is pounding my brain.
But they murdered much more with their dark, bloody chains,And your body of pity lies bleeding."
Tom Paxon, "Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney")
("Now this song makes sense. At first this stanza seemed out of context". Fred Klopfer, social psychologist)
Susan Klopfer
And they swore that the murderers soon would be found, and they laughed as they spat their tobacco."
(Tom Paxon, "Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney")
Mississippians need to strive for "more than a measure" of reconcilliation. Thousands of murders of black people speak for themselves. Whenever truth is inserted into the Mississippi Story, it seems that many run for cover (so they won't be exposed) or else try to "represent" Mississippi in a better light.
Trent Lott, at least, isn't so hypocritical that when given the chance he continues to keep the Mississippi spin going. (Does anti-anti lynching equate to pro-lynching? Someone help me, I'm confused).
If a person decides to be the "negotiator" then I do believe they are responsible for what is negotiated. Personally, I'd rather see truth win than just another spin.
* * *
This morning, I was doing some research on the "autopsy" of James Chaney. A New York pathologist came in to examine his body and ended up being reported to the Sovereignty Commission by a Jackson physician ("Dr. Featherstone") as unethical.
The pressure on Mrs. Chaney to refuse permission had been tremendous, Spain wrote. "Philadelphia was against it. Without her, we would never see the body - the authorities in Philadelphia seemed decidedly unfavorable to a second medical examination."
As he was waiting for a decision, Dr. Spain wrote for Ramparts magazine (a Catholic publication) that he leafed through a file of Mississippi reports from field teams of the Medical Committee for Human Rights:
"I had only the stomach to read two of them. The first report described extended treatment given a young negro civil rights wowrker for fifteen or twenty burns scattered all over his body.
"He had been stopped by police in a small Mississippi town for questioning, and while they questioned him they jabbed lighted cigarettes into his flesh. the burns weren't treated, and were ulcerous and infected when the medical volunteers found the boy.
"In another Mississippi town, a medical report said, [the town] had activated a local statute requiring any 'stranger' entering the town to register at police headquarters - as if he were entering a foreign country. The youth in the report had registered, but a policeman insisted that the boy come to the station to "check" his compliance with the statute.
"The boy's name was found on the books. The officer then told him to "run along," and in the same breath swung his billy club into the boy's groin with such force that the youth passed out. Surgery was later necessary to evacuate a blood clot (larger than an orange) created by the blow."
Spain wrote that he was too depressed to read further. "I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of these reports. After conversations with physicians who have lived in Mississippi, I believe that incidents of this nature - with varying degrees of brutality - go on regularly and relentlessly every day of the week, and are too frequent to be considered 'newsworthy.'"
Dr. Spain was finally allowed to examine the young Chaney's corpse, with three Ole Miss physicians present:
"I was immediately struck by how slight and frail this young man was - a thin boy with tender skin. I looked at his wrist, the one that was reported broken in the unofficial examination, and I couldn't find the bullet hole that the newspapers mentioned.
"The wrist was broken, alright. Bones were smashed so badly that his wrist must have been literally flapping when he was carried. But there was no indication of any bullet hole.
"I looked up at the three doctors opposite me. Their faces were stone. I motioned to the wrist - I asked where the bullet hole was.
"One of the stone figures facing me offered a mumbled explanation, something about how Chaney' hand had been across his chest when the first examination was made and the examiner must have mistaken the bullet holes in his chest for one in the hand.
"I looked at him in amazement, but our eyes never met. During the remainder of the examination, not another word was spoken."
Spain noticed that...Chaney's jaw was "completely shattered, split vertically, from some tremendous force" ...that he "had been beaten in an unhuman fashion. The blows that had so terribly shattered his bone - I surmised he must have been beaten with chains, or a pipe - were in themselves sufficient to cause death.
"It was...impossible to say if he had died before he was shot- the bullets had been removed in the first autopsy, and the bullet tracks had been carefully excised so I could not trace the path of the bullets."
Further, the skull was crushed from another direct blow..."I could barely believe the destruction to these frail young bones.
"In my twenty-five years as a pathologist and medical examiner, I have never seen bones so severely shattered, except in tremendously high speed accidents or airplane crashes.
"It was obvious to any first-year medical student that this boy had been beaten to a pulp."
* * *
Over the weekend, I had the opportunity of meeting C.W. Robberson at THE memorial service who told me that Mississippi is just hard for outsiders to understand. She, herself, is often embarrassed, she admitted, by how some white faculty at Ole Miss talk about blacks when only Mississippi white folks are around. She spoke of a Negerian attorney who applied for a federally funded spot with a NOAH-funded project.
The department chair decided against him (even though the rest of the faculty voted for him). And that was that! One woman faculty member argued with the chairman and eventually left the program out of disgust and concern for her own career, C. W. said.
That's sad. Maybe Ole Miss could use some internal "negotiating" itself rather than sending out its minions to fix the "problems" in Philadelphia and elsewhere.
When his Mississippi job was completed, Dr. Spain returned home. "I felt an irrational, immediate urge to get out of Mississippi the fastest way possible. The first plane out went the wrong way from New York - to New Orleans - but I felt an indescribable relief when I boarded it and flew - I guess you could say I almost fled - from Jackson."
The "unofficial" autopsy report made shortly after the discovery of the bodies remained the only public document on the death, according Ramparts editors. "The Coroner's Jury of Neshoba County ruled several months after the murders that the caue or causes of death of the three boys could not be officially determined. Therefore the Coroner's Jury had no reason to ask the District Attorney to seek an indictment from the Grand Jury. An official autopsy report has never been made."
Do we wonder why there is so much community support in Philadelphia to take control of the annual memorial service for Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman...
"James Chaney your body exploded in pain,
and the beating they gave you is pounding my brain.
But they murdered much more with their dark, bloody chains,And your body of pity lies bleeding."
Tom Paxon, "Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney")
("Now this song makes sense. At first this stanza seemed out of context". Fred Klopfer, social psychologist)
Susan Klopfer
4 年 ago
in Why Doesn’t Mississippi D.A. Mark Duncan Want Assistance From The DOJ? on Hungry Blues
It is not unusual at all in Mississippi for the prosecutor to go after just one white person, no matter how many may have been involved in the crime. You don't want to make too many people mad, afterall. Here's one example that few people know about; it took place in the small Sunflower Community of Drew, just a few miles away from where Emmett Till was murdered just sixteen years earlier.
Drew High School student, Jo Etha Collier, was murdered on the evening of her graduation in 1971. At approximately 9:45 p.m. on May 25, shortly after the ceremony ended, Collier was talking to friends in front of a small grocery store. As a pickup truck passed by, Collier was hit in the head and killed by gunshots coming from the truck.
It was determined that Collier was shot by Wesley Parks, 25, of Drew in a murder that “seemed to have no motive,” said a sheriff’s deputy, at the time.
Parks, his brother and their nephew, Allen Wilkerson, 19, of Memphis were in the truck and all three were arrested in nearby Cleveland within three hours of the shooting.
A 22-caliber pistol “with one bullet missing” was found in the car along with a 12-gauge Army issue riot gun and a 22-caliber automatic rifle, according to Sovereignty Commission reports.
Civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer of nearby Ruleville disagreed over motive, saying that she was “convinced Collier’s death was connected with the current voter registration campaign.”
Going through Aaron Henry's archives (before Tougaloo College gave them away), I found a long letter he wrote to the district attorney of the three-county region (where the current DA is not being especially cooperative with the Emmett Till investigation).
PROMPTED BY THE murders of Collier and others, Aaron Henry had telegraphed President Nixon to protest the “wave of senseless killing in Mississippi of black citizens by white citizens.”
Henry said it was the “third such killing in less than a week.” “There was no provocation and no words were passed. It’s doubtful that they knew Miss Collier,” Henry told a UPI reporter. “They apparently were out to kill a black, any black.”
All three men were initially charged with murder; but only Wesley Parks was tried. Charges were dropped against the other two men. Parks was sent to prison for five years, but served less than three years of his sentence.(This happens a lot, too.)
This inaction prompted Henry to question George Everett, D.A. for the three-county region. There were potential dangers from Everett’s decision to drop charges, and in a letter to Everett, Henry warned:
Your statement today … really pulls the rug from under those of us in the NAACP who worked so hard to prevent violent retaliation against whites by determined members of the black community. Particularly you have seriously undercut the good will efforts of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer and attorney Cleve McDowell.[McDowell was murdered in Drew in 1997 under very suspicious circumstances.sk]
There are not as many of us in the Black Community as there once were who took a forthright position condemning violence, for whatever the cause.
Now there are many Blacks anxious to engage in the “eye for an eye,” “tooth for a tooth,” type of violence. Putting it another way, “white man for black man” retaliation. When announcements come out such as you issued today, [they] only give reason for those prone toward violence to exercise it.
Those who once had the confidence of the community, on the sides of non-violence, are losing the confidence of the Black citizens of our communities, especially when we were the ones to caution and advise the masses to have confidence in the law or the legal system.
You see, if a jury acquits a man who is tried, and in this case a white man for the murder of a Black citizen, then at least there has been some attempt to secure justice.
But when the District Attorney pronounces that those charged will not be brought to trial, then we are almost back to where we were in the “Dred Scott,” U. S. Supreme Court decision of a hundred years ago, that established that a Black had no rights that whites were bound to respect. Of course this also meant the privilege of a white to take the life of a black with no fear of ever coming to trial, just as your announcement today.
Once the pent up violence that exists in many members of the Black Community begins to explode, then the cry of the white community is going to be a call for “peace.” … You can help us in our position, or render us useless, and those prone toward violence will be in the position of advising our people what steps to take next…. Think it over!
At the time, Aaron Henry, a strong state NAACP leader, was investigating a number of lynchings that were taking place in the Delta and around the state. For some reason, there had been an increase of these activities.
Susan
Drew High School student, Jo Etha Collier, was murdered on the evening of her graduation in 1971. At approximately 9:45 p.m. on May 25, shortly after the ceremony ended, Collier was talking to friends in front of a small grocery store. As a pickup truck passed by, Collier was hit in the head and killed by gunshots coming from the truck.
It was determined that Collier was shot by Wesley Parks, 25, of Drew in a murder that “seemed to have no motive,” said a sheriff’s deputy, at the time.
Parks, his brother and their nephew, Allen Wilkerson, 19, of Memphis were in the truck and all three were arrested in nearby Cleveland within three hours of the shooting.
A 22-caliber pistol “with one bullet missing” was found in the car along with a 12-gauge Army issue riot gun and a 22-caliber automatic rifle, according to Sovereignty Commission reports.
Civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer of nearby Ruleville disagreed over motive, saying that she was “convinced Collier’s death was connected with the current voter registration campaign.”
Going through Aaron Henry's archives (before Tougaloo College gave them away), I found a long letter he wrote to the district attorney of the three-county region (where the current DA is not being especially cooperative with the Emmett Till investigation).
PROMPTED BY THE murders of Collier and others, Aaron Henry had telegraphed President Nixon to protest the “wave of senseless killing in Mississippi of black citizens by white citizens.”
Henry said it was the “third such killing in less than a week.” “There was no provocation and no words were passed. It’s doubtful that they knew Miss Collier,” Henry told a UPI reporter. “They apparently were out to kill a black, any black.”
All three men were initially charged with murder; but only Wesley Parks was tried. Charges were dropped against the other two men. Parks was sent to prison for five years, but served less than three years of his sentence.(This happens a lot, too.)
This inaction prompted Henry to question George Everett, D.A. for the three-county region. There were potential dangers from Everett’s decision to drop charges, and in a letter to Everett, Henry warned:
Your statement today … really pulls the rug from under those of us in the NAACP who worked so hard to prevent violent retaliation against whites by determined members of the black community. Particularly you have seriously undercut the good will efforts of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer and attorney Cleve McDowell.[McDowell was murdered in Drew in 1997 under very suspicious circumstances.sk]
There are not as many of us in the Black Community as there once were who took a forthright position condemning violence, for whatever the cause.
Now there are many Blacks anxious to engage in the “eye for an eye,” “tooth for a tooth,” type of violence. Putting it another way, “white man for black man” retaliation. When announcements come out such as you issued today, [they] only give reason for those prone toward violence to exercise it.
Those who once had the confidence of the community, on the sides of non-violence, are losing the confidence of the Black citizens of our communities, especially when we were the ones to caution and advise the masses to have confidence in the law or the legal system.
You see, if a jury acquits a man who is tried, and in this case a white man for the murder of a Black citizen, then at least there has been some attempt to secure justice.
But when the District Attorney pronounces that those charged will not be brought to trial, then we are almost back to where we were in the “Dred Scott,” U. S. Supreme Court decision of a hundred years ago, that established that a Black had no rights that whites were bound to respect. Of course this also meant the privilege of a white to take the life of a black with no fear of ever coming to trial, just as your announcement today.
Once the pent up violence that exists in many members of the Black Community begins to explode, then the cry of the white community is going to be a call for “peace.” … You can help us in our position, or render us useless, and those prone toward violence will be in the position of advising our people what steps to take next…. Think it over!
At the time, Aaron Henry, a strong state NAACP leader, was investigating a number of lynchings that were taking place in the Delta and around the state. For some reason, there had been an increase of these activities.
Susan
4 年 ago
in Open Letter To Leesha Faulkner, re: “Deep in my heart I do believe there is justice” on Hungry Blues
Susan Glisson represents "Ole Miss," less known as the University of Mississippi. The Ole Miss, here, does not mean "Old Mississippi." Rather, this endearing term stands for the wife of the "Ole Massah" on a plantation. This is exactly why this nickname was chosen (and can be traced historically). Ole Miss, in all of its desire to be on the leading edge of race and reconcilliation has managed, first of all, to avoid changing its Ole Miss nickname and even uses this term for the school's website. One day, wandering around campus, I talked to one of the few black students (13 percent) and she said it was pretty embarrassing going into the student union under the "Ole Miss" sign.
Secondly, this is a University that has refused to allow scholars to view the James O. Eastland archives. Eastland was a racist planter who represented this state for years. He brought in plenty of farm subsidies for himself but fought food programs for malnourished Mississippi children. The law school at Ole Miss is named for him. Only recently has a historian begun to go through the archives, and only after Eastland's crony was allowed access for years to "prepare" the documents.
My point is, too much has already been "negotiated" away in this state. One more good example was yesterday's refusal by Mississippi's senators to apologize for the racist stance taken by the very institution they represent. No one, including Susan Glisson, has the right to negotiate away common decency.
sk
Secondly, this is a University that has refused to allow scholars to view the James O. Eastland archives. Eastland was a racist planter who represented this state for years. He brought in plenty of farm subsidies for himself but fought food programs for malnourished Mississippi children. The law school at Ole Miss is named for him. Only recently has a historian begun to go through the archives, and only after Eastland's crony was allowed access for years to "prepare" the documents.
My point is, too much has already been "negotiated" away in this state. One more good example was yesterday's refusal by Mississippi's senators to apologize for the racist stance taken by the very institution they represent. No one, including Susan Glisson, has the right to negotiate away common decency.
sk
4 年 ago
in Open Letter To Leesha Faulkner, re: “Deep in my heart I do believe there is justice” on Hungry Blues
"Three guys. Civil Rights Workers..."
I feel a need to comment:
Mississippi journalist and self-described "good ole boy," the late Willie Morris, known for speaking out on civil rights matters with passion and some candor, believed there was some feeling in Mississippi after the murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner "that we hit the bottom of the barrel … and that the better people of the South and of Mississippi must, as Abraham Lincoln said in his second inaugural address, ‘Try to respond to the better angels of our nature.’"
Morris, a native of Yazoo City, in a 1983 interview by author Studs Terkel talked about Florence Mars, a liberal white woman who served as his informant as he covered the Philadelphia, Mississippi story:
"Her courage comes in strange packages. She was forty years old during The Troubles (they always called that period "The Troubles") and here she was one of the handful of human beings in the town who stood up to the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan controlled the police and a lot of the city government.
"In fact, it interested me that almost the only people in the town who stood up to the Klan were women. A few of them were the wives of Catholics who knew their husbands were not secretly members of the Klan because of the Klan’s traditional stance against the Pope."
Once visiting the spot where the three murders took place at sunset on Rock Cut Road, Morris said he'd written of experiencing a "palpable sense of these killings taking place in those red gullies…. The South and Mississippi could not stoop any lower."
sk
I feel a need to comment:
Mississippi journalist and self-described "good ole boy," the late Willie Morris, known for speaking out on civil rights matters with passion and some candor, believed there was some feeling in Mississippi after the murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner "that we hit the bottom of the barrel … and that the better people of the South and of Mississippi must, as Abraham Lincoln said in his second inaugural address, ‘Try to respond to the better angels of our nature.’"
Morris, a native of Yazoo City, in a 1983 interview by author Studs Terkel talked about Florence Mars, a liberal white woman who served as his informant as he covered the Philadelphia, Mississippi story:
"Her courage comes in strange packages. She was forty years old during The Troubles (they always called that period "The Troubles") and here she was one of the handful of human beings in the town who stood up to the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan controlled the police and a lot of the city government.
"In fact, it interested me that almost the only people in the town who stood up to the Klan were women. A few of them were the wives of Catholics who knew their husbands were not secretly members of the Klan because of the Klan’s traditional stance against the Pope."
Once visiting the spot where the three murders took place at sunset on Rock Cut Road, Morris said he'd written of experiencing a "palpable sense of these killings taking place in those red gullies…. The South and Mississippi could not stoop any lower."
sk
4 年 ago
in “They’re playing a very vicious game here; they’re seriously playing a game!” on Hungry Blues
Quite simply, Mississippi's murdering past is not going to fade away. Here's just one tiny example of why:
Last evening as I was doing some follow-up research, looking for additional information on the relationship of Guy Banister (remember Jim Garrison?) and Senator Eastland, and Jack Childs (the key FBI informant behind the taping of Dr. Martin Luther King) it ended up that Jack Childs has a file in the Sovereignty Commission files (SCR ID # 2-62-1-107-14-1-1).
Jack Child's name had shown up in an address book of Aaron Henry's that was apparently stolen from Aaron Henry and copied into the Commission files. But right above Jack Childs' file was another one for J. A. Childs (SCR ID # 10-70-0-2-1-1-1). Could this be a second file on Jack?
The second Mr. Childs was someone else, the employer of an unfortunate black man, Mr. Booker T. Mixon of Itta Bena, who was dragged behind a car near Marks (Quitman County) in 1959. This "auto accident" was not investigated and no autopsy was done even though Mr. Mixon's totally nude body showed "abrasions, cuts and contusions." He remained in a coma in the Clarksdale hospital from Oct. 12 until Oct. 23 when he died "without uttering a word."
No.. this history is not going to fade just because one old man is found guilty in 2005. Too many old black people keep their own lists of all of the other thousands of people who were lynched or who "disappeared" in Mississippi over the years. Further, the Sovereignty Commission files are filled with names such as Mr. Mixon's, and sometimes, when the stars are right, the names of these murder victims shimmer through, if only for a moment in the early morning hours.
Susan
Last evening as I was doing some follow-up research, looking for additional information on the relationship of Guy Banister (remember Jim Garrison?) and Senator Eastland, and Jack Childs (the key FBI informant behind the taping of Dr. Martin Luther King) it ended up that Jack Childs has a file in the Sovereignty Commission files (SCR ID # 2-62-1-107-14-1-1).
Jack Child's name had shown up in an address book of Aaron Henry's that was apparently stolen from Aaron Henry and copied into the Commission files. But right above Jack Childs' file was another one for J. A. Childs (SCR ID # 10-70-0-2-1-1-1). Could this be a second file on Jack?
The second Mr. Childs was someone else, the employer of an unfortunate black man, Mr. Booker T. Mixon of Itta Bena, who was dragged behind a car near Marks (Quitman County) in 1959. This "auto accident" was not investigated and no autopsy was done even though Mr. Mixon's totally nude body showed "abrasions, cuts and contusions." He remained in a coma in the Clarksdale hospital from Oct. 12 until Oct. 23 when he died "without uttering a word."
No.. this history is not going to fade just because one old man is found guilty in 2005. Too many old black people keep their own lists of all of the other thousands of people who were lynched or who "disappeared" in Mississippi over the years. Further, the Sovereignty Commission files are filled with names such as Mr. Mixon's, and sometimes, when the stars are right, the names of these murder victims shimmer through, if only for a moment in the early morning hours.
Susan
4 年 ago
in Ben Chaney Spells It Out on Hungry Blues
The point Ben Chaney makes regarding the relationship of the Klan to the Sovereignty Commission is particularly interesting in light of the "investigation" of "subversives working for integration" called for by the Commission (report SCR ID # 2-112-1-36-1-1-1)in February of 1964.
From Feb. 11-25, Director Erle Johnston sent Virgil Downing into Neshoba, Holmes, Sharkey, Yazoo, Washington and several other counties with instructions to contact all newly elected sheriffs with the purpose of offering "full cooperation and assisting them in any way possible." Both CORE and the NAACP are singled out in this report as causing potential racial trouble.
While Sheriff Rainey was "out of town" the investigator met with Rainey's wife who promised "should any trouble develop" her husband would notify the Commission right away. The short, two-page report is posted on my blog.
From Feb. 11-25, Director Erle Johnston sent Virgil Downing into Neshoba, Holmes, Sharkey, Yazoo, Washington and several other counties with instructions to contact all newly elected sheriffs with the purpose of offering "full cooperation and assisting them in any way possible." Both CORE and the NAACP are singled out in this report as causing potential racial trouble.
While Sheriff Rainey was "out of town" the investigator met with Rainey's wife who promised "should any trouble develop" her husband would notify the Commission right away. The short, two-page report is posted on my blog.
4 年 ago
in Three Approaches To Reality on Hungry Blues
Life is twisted.... This past weekend my husband and I drove from Natchez to Philadelphia by way of the Natchez Trace Parkway (with a few extra jogs off the main path). After asking several white residents for directions, and meeting with no success, we asked a black man how to get to "the church" and he gave us a good map. While we were talking about the upcoming trial, he grinned and said that Killen's brother was actually a "pretty nice guy" who'd introduced him to the woman who later became his wife. But before we left Natchez, after looking for any signs of civil rights markers and giving up, we purchased a local newspaper. The weekend issue (from feature stories to an editorial) focused on the importance of civility and how this was becoming a lost art these days in Natchez. (Like the place was civil in the old days?) Perhaps by coincidence, in the "Society" section appeared an announcement of "manners" classes for kindergarteners through sixth graders at $45 a pop. For learning stuff like why napkins are important, I guess. What could be more uncivil than not using one?
4 年 ago
in The 1955 Emmett Till Trial Transcript: A Map Of American White Supremacism on Hungry Blues
Paul: The wonderful part about living in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta is hearing the "whispers" of what went on years ago. Mississippi's history, oral but not always written, includes routine reports of brutality and murder.
Early Delta planters were always fearing a race war and in September of 1889, the Governor sent three regiments to Minter City (in Leflore County but close to Money in Tallahatchie County where Emmett Till was kidnapped) to ensure that CFA members were unarmed. Completing their assignment, the state regiments withdrew and allowed a massacre of CFA members and families to proceed.
There were no reports of blacks being armed or of whites being shot; estimates of African Americans murdered reached as high as one hundred. From his research on the massacre, historian William F. Holmes observed that neither the National Guard, nor the governor and black residents of Leflore County were forthcoming with accounts of the incident. But he discovered several first-hand accounts by travelers who happened to be in the region, including the observations of J. C. Engle, an agent for a New York textile company, who was in and about Greenwood during the trouble:
When he arrived at New Orleans several days later, Engle told reporters that Negroes “were shot down like dogs.” Members of the posse not only killed people in the swamps, he said, but they even invaded homes and murdered “men women and children.” Engle recalled one act in which a sixteen year old white boy “beat out the brains of a little colored girl while a bigger brother with a gun kept the little one’s parents off.” Several sources reported that the posse singled out four well-known leaders of the Colored Farmers Alliance whom they shot to death: Adolph Horton, Scott Morris, Jack Dial and J.M. Dial. “A black undercover reporter sent to the region stated that the truth may never be known because terrified blacks dare not speak of the matter, even to each other.”
The lack of coverage of this massacre by the Mississippi press, and the failure of state and federal officials to lead investigations, left researcher Holmes wondering how many other instances of violence of a “greater and lesser magnitude” happened in Mississippi during this era. (There were many.)
Recently, one young African American who grew up in Minter City in the late 1970s and early 1980s told me he had never heard of the massacre but did report of folk lore from his youth about "dead bodies" in the “Singing River,” who could sometimes be heard at night. sk
BTW I have put up one more blog that should interest you. I'm posting relating Mississippi Sovereignty Committee records to http://Mississippisovereigntycommission.blogspo... and they are pretty fascinating. I noticed that you mentioned the middleoftheinternet.com but that's not the blog site and you might have trouble posting there. The other blogs are emmett-till.com and civilrightsbooks.com. Interesting stuff, isn't it?
Susan Klopfer
Early Delta planters were always fearing a race war and in September of 1889, the Governor sent three regiments to Minter City (in Leflore County but close to Money in Tallahatchie County where Emmett Till was kidnapped) to ensure that CFA members were unarmed. Completing their assignment, the state regiments withdrew and allowed a massacre of CFA members and families to proceed.
There were no reports of blacks being armed or of whites being shot; estimates of African Americans murdered reached as high as one hundred. From his research on the massacre, historian William F. Holmes observed that neither the National Guard, nor the governor and black residents of Leflore County were forthcoming with accounts of the incident. But he discovered several first-hand accounts by travelers who happened to be in the region, including the observations of J. C. Engle, an agent for a New York textile company, who was in and about Greenwood during the trouble:
When he arrived at New Orleans several days later, Engle told reporters that Negroes “were shot down like dogs.” Members of the posse not only killed people in the swamps, he said, but they even invaded homes and murdered “men women and children.” Engle recalled one act in which a sixteen year old white boy “beat out the brains of a little colored girl while a bigger brother with a gun kept the little one’s parents off.” Several sources reported that the posse singled out four well-known leaders of the Colored Farmers Alliance whom they shot to death: Adolph Horton, Scott Morris, Jack Dial and J.M. Dial. “A black undercover reporter sent to the region stated that the truth may never be known because terrified blacks dare not speak of the matter, even to each other.”
The lack of coverage of this massacre by the Mississippi press, and the failure of state and federal officials to lead investigations, left researcher Holmes wondering how many other instances of violence of a “greater and lesser magnitude” happened in Mississippi during this era. (There were many.)
Recently, one young African American who grew up in Minter City in the late 1970s and early 1980s told me he had never heard of the massacre but did report of folk lore from his youth about "dead bodies" in the “Singing River,” who could sometimes be heard at night. sk
BTW I have put up one more blog that should interest you. I'm posting relating Mississippi Sovereignty Committee records to http://Mississippisovereigntycommission.blogspo... and they are pretty fascinating. I noticed that you mentioned the middleoftheinternet.com but that's not the blog site and you might have trouble posting there. The other blogs are emmett-till.com and civilrightsbooks.com. Interesting stuff, isn't it?
Susan Klopfer
