Cleve McDowell Autopsy; interesting... (Mississippi civil rights advocate, lawyer. Murdered in 1997)

Many of you may be interested in looking at the entire autopsy of Cleve McDowell. I believe that I own the only copy, since the state of Mississippi said it "disappeared" with time...

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwmgTfJtEx11SW5lMmU0VDJEQUk/edit#

Pretty interesting stuff, and I have written quite a bit about the person who conducted this autopsy and the observations of a physician/lawyer:

http://emmett-till.blogspot.com/2011/08/mississippi-attorney-meets-early-death.html

Related Posts

News Release on McDowell Autopsy

Asa Earl Carter -- the Forrest Bedford of the Native American literary world?

I was fascinated by a recent public television documentary about a man named Asa Carter who changed his name mid-life name to Forrest Bedford Carter, becoming an author of a controversial memoir, now recognized as a work for fiction, The Education of Little Tree.

Asa Carter, segregationist, aka Forrest Bedford Carter, the Native American author

Asa Earl Carter (September 4, 1925--June 7, 1979), was a devote of  Nathan Bedford Forrest (July 13, 1821 – October 29, 1877),  a notorious and racist  lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. Like the real Gen. Forrest, Carter was a rabid segregationist and an infamous racist propagandist, as well, in the 1960s. A leader of the (White) Citizens Councils (a group dedicated to opposing desegregation and one that was generally considered to be a front group for the Ku Klux Klan) of North Alabama, Carter was the head of a "klavern" of the Ku Klux Klan and was an unofficial speechwriter for segregationist Governor George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama in 1968 and candidate for the Presidency in 1972.

Since its first publication by Delacorte Press in 1976, the book was quite popular, with many people drawn to its message of traditional, simple living and love of nature. However,The Education of Little Tree was the subject of controversy after the publication of an article years later, on October 4, 1991, by Dan T. Carter (a history professor and distant cousin of Asa Carter) called "The Transformation of a Klansman" in the New York Times. 


Little Tree, it turned out, was a sham -- any student of Native Americans would have known this from the start, but the book found its home with people who wanted to believe what Carter had written.

Originally accepted as an actual work by a Cherokee Indian, The Education of Little Tree ranks as one of the great literary hoaxes of American literature. Carter also published two Westerns, including The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales that actor Clint Eastwood made into the 1976 hit movie The Outlaw Josie Wells (1976). After the Eastwood film was released, the New York Times published the truth about Carter, revealing that "Forrest Carter" was actually Asa Earl Carter, the segregationist. 

Since Carter was part of the Citizens Councils -- originating in 1954 in Mississippi -- and a well-known segretationist writer, I wanted to see if there were any records on him in the Sovereignty Commission. And...

Go to the Main Search Page at


http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/

and plug in Asa Carter.... for two results that will lead you to three links. Be sure to put in the last name, first. Carter...Asa.

I would provide the direct links, but the state library is playing games this days, so you have to bring these up on your own.

Good luck and have fun. Susan

(Not much there, just some newspaper articles and column, but enough to bring some fascinating history to life. sk)

Related Blogs:


Civil Rights News Releases


The Emmett Till Blog

Remembering Emmett Till; looking through some Sovereignty Commission 'tidbits', getting a feel for the times

Note: I wrote this post last year as the 56th anniversary of young Emmett Till's murder approached, and included some links to Sovereignty Commission files related to his death. In light of Trayvon Martin's murder, I thought that some readers might be interested in more history about Emmett Till. If you don't know about the Sovereignty Commission, it was a state-run spy organization to halt integration, and was formed following Till's murder.

Very few such records actually are in the state's archives regarding Emmett Till, since most of the records were probably boxed up and taken home by sovereignty commission directors and others.

But -- it is still interesting to see what is there. It helps give a feel for the times, if nothing else.

Here are some links -- there are many  more. Remember that you can look up more records yourself by going to
http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/namesearch.php

Just search on Till, since there are various ways these records are indexed (i.e., Louis Till, Emmit Till, Emmett Till, etc.)

Negro Leader Critical of Southern Juries, FBI

Signs of Attack Seen by NAACP on State Segregation

Part of a conversation on lynching in Mississippi, mentions Till; tries to place blame of acquittal on a "negro undertaker." Fascinating. I spoke with that person before he died, and that is not the story he told me...

Political cartoon of Mississippi black murder victims, includes Till.

"Crack Mississippi, and you can crack the South. Crack the South, and you can crack the U.S." History professor and Citizens Councils member fears the civil rights movement is the forerunner of Communism.

Haley Barbour Forgets His Citizens Councils History; Sovereignty Commission Files Help Restore Memories

Guess old Haley Barbour has totally forgotten about the relationship of the Citizens Councils to the ... Sovereignty Commission... to the... state police...to the... state legislature..to public officials, etc. Take a look at these files I found on the Sovereignty Commission site. All clearly show that everyone was working closely with Citizens Councils to keep Blacks "in line."

Just think what we would know about this history if ALL of the files were made available! My guess is that plenty of these files are still sitting in the basements of some Yazoo City, Mississippi homes (alternate state capital) waiting to be discovered.

File 1

File 2

File 3

File 4

File 5

File 6

File 7

File 8

File 9

File 10

Files 11

File 12

Good Ol' White Citizens Councils Still Operating in Mississippi (and Elsewhere)

Mississippi Senator Belongs to Uptown Klan (White Citizens Councils, Now Called Council of Conservative Citizens -- Same Folks, Same Message)

Last weekend, Sen. Lydia Chassaniol (R-Winona) was the keynote speaker at the annual convention of the Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization that has been classified as a white separatist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and described as having “a thinly-veiled white supremacist agenda” by The New York Times. On the CCC web site, you can buy a “white pride” T-shirt; their platform praises America’s “European” heritage and condemns “mixture of the races”; a previous incarnation of their web site described African Americans as “a retrograde species of humanity”; and so forth. The organization’s agenda is fairly transparent.

Sen. Chassaniol has refused to disavow the organization, praising it as a group of “lone wolves crying in the wilderness” during her keynote and stating that its presence “gives [her] hope.” When she was later asked about her membership in the group, she replied that “a person’s membership in any organization is a private matter.”

Why should we care?

More Reading

Link to Mississippi Council of Conservative Citizens
http://msccc.wordpress.com/about/

Trent Lott was a member ..
http://www.anusha.com/lottties.htm

And of course, Mississippi's Governor, soon to be Republican Presidential Hopeful, Haley Barbour, hangs with this group, too ..

From Sovereignty Commission Files ...

Search on Robert "Tut" Patterson, and Robert Patterson, founder of this group, from Indianola.
http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/

Filmmaker collaborating with FBI on civil rights cases for TV show

JACKSON, Miss. — As an African-American teenager in Louisiana, Keith Beauchamp tried interracial dating - behaviour that prompted his parents to tell him the grisly tale of Emmett Till, who was murdered for whistling at a white woman.

The story of Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago who had come to Mississippi to visit his uncle in August 1955, was seared into Beauchamp's mind and, when he moved to New York to begin his career as a filmmaker, the slaying was his first major project.

Beauchamp's 2005 documentary on Till, in large part, led the federal government to reopen the 1955 murder case. Last year, a grand jury declined to indict Carolyn Bryant Donham, the object of the whistle, on a manslaughter charge. The two men who brutally beat the teen and dumped his body in a river died years ago.

Still, Beauchamp's documentary expertise and his ability to persuade people to talk about buried secrets of the civil rights era have earned him a rare collaboration with the FBI.

Now, Beauchamp is filming a series of documentaries based on civil rights killings for the cable channel History as well as TV One. Any new evidence Beauchamp uncovers is shared with the FBI for its Cold Case Unit that focuses on crimes that have gone unpunished from that era.

In turn, the FBI is arranging interviews for Beauchamp with veteran agents who covered the cases and other contacts, said agency spokesman Ernie Porter.

*******
Sovereignty Commission files on Clinton Melton, murdered shortly after the Emmett Till trial ended ...

A second Sovereignty Commission file regarding Melton's murder

Files on Birdia Keglar

"Birdie Kilgar" [Birdia Keglar, also listed as Elizabeth Keglar]
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