Freedom Riders Under the Sovereignty Commission Radar

As Mississippi honored the 1961 Freedom Riders on the 50th anniversary of the movement that changed America forever, one among them returning was Thomas Armstrong, the first to join the Rides in his native Mississippi.

Armstrong led more than 30 students from Tougaloo College, Jackson State University and local high schools in going to the bus terminal in Jackson and boldly entering the white waiting room, refusing to leave. They were all arrested and jailed, as police were locking up freedom riders coming into the state.

Who were the Freedom Riders and what did they do? You can find a number of fascinating (and chilling) files kept by Mississippi's secret spy force, the Sovereignty Commission. Here are a few links to get you started ...


"Keep an eye out on him"

"Soviets Planned Freedom Rides"

"Names and Addresses"

"Beating 'Cleared'"

Of course, there are hundreds of records about this sordid part of Civil Rights history in these files. Many, truly fascinating. BTW, I have written extensively about the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission in my book, Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited."

Susan

Civil Rights Cold Cases Dumped by the FBI; Join Me On a Quick Trip to the Delta

Getting ready (packing) for my trip to Mississippi to work on several cold cases that seem to be shunned by the FBI and others. Actually, the FBI has thrown in the towel and apparently won't be using the $8 million they were awarded to investigate these killings of black people like Birdia Keglar, Adlena Hamlett, James Keglar, and others (all have Sovereignty Commission records). Or maybe they already ran out of money!

Click the audio clip, above, and I'll fill you in on the trip. Along the way I'll be blogging with audio and video and will appreciate you comments, questions and suggestions. Thanks.

Louis Allen Cold Case; Family Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired of FBI; No Results

In 1943, at age 23, Louis Allen enlisted in the Army. He drove ammunition trucks in New Guinea during World War II. While there, Louis also started boxing. His burly 5-foot-8-inch, 220-pound frame made him a formidable fighter. In July 1944, he received an honorable discharge. According to his discharge papers, his character was rated “excellent.” The Army gave Louis $300 in “mustering out pay.”

Back in Liberty, Louis returned to the tenuous privilege of being a black person favored by the whites of his community. He established a successful logging business with loyal customers of both races. His fortunes changed, however, on Sept. 25, 1961.

Read the story of Louis Allen here ...
* * * * *

When searching the Sovereignty Commission files, check under both spellings of Louis and Lewis...

Here are some links to get you started:

"Mysterious Killing of the Only Witness to the Murder of Negro By a White Man"

Louis (Lewis) Allen Had Asked For Federal Protection But Was Refused

Conference Regarding Death of Herbert Lee
* * * * *

The FBI needs to open all of its files and then it needs to send a representative down to Mississippi and start collecting Sovereignty Commission Files. What do you think??

What Change Is All About ... Watching It Move Into Mississippi

Marching in Grenada, Miss. (Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement)



Dear Blog Readers:

I get wonderful e-mail from people who are interested in the Emmett Till story and related civil rights history. The best email, of course, comes from those who share their personal history of what it was like to be involved in the modern civil rights movement.

Here is a powerful message that I recently received from a Grenada, Miss. blogger:

Dear Susan:

Could you please mention this site -- the John Rundle High School Google Group -- http://groups.google.com/group/JRHS.

I will be visiting the Emmett Till website. I have visited Money, MS and have seen the store which was still standing 5 years ago.

I am currently in Baghdad but I'll be home to Washington DC in another week or so and I'll look forward to reading your book. I want to work with our JRHS group to understand our history -- of all our citizens -- so we can start talking about a new future for Mississippi. My dream is to go back home and try to make a difference. That is the dream of many.

Charles Latham is one who has done that. I'd like to get more stories published of those that have gone home and what their perspective is for the future. I re-read Charles email to the JRHS Group from 5 years ago and it is a powerful statement.

You had to be there at the time to understand exactly how dangerous it was for a black child to try to go to a white school. I could visualize Martin Luther King Jr. shaking the hands of the children that morning of September 20, 1966, before they left to go to the schools.

As a father of three I do not know that I could do that -- but I also don't know that I could stand in my child's way if they want to stand up for what they thought was right. It was courage on an unprecedented scale and it was that courage, jijutsued by the beating of the children into a national outrage, that changed the South.

MMaxey
* * * *

So here is the story (printed with permission) that Michael Maxey (MMaxey) refers to, with a short introduction by Maxey:

Charles Latham is an African American alumnus of John Rundle High School. Charles was in the Class of 1971. He left Grenada and this email tells his story and why he came back home. The photograph that Charles refers to in the email is of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, escorting children to school on September 20, 1966. He was one of the black students who attended Lizzie Horn Elementary that day. I've copied Charles on this email.

Michael Maxey
JRHS 1970

Email From: "Charles Latham" To: JRHS Group
Subject: RE: JRHS Website Update >Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 11:27:33 -0800

Fellow JRHS Alumni:

My name is Charles Latham (class of '71), although I didn't know you all personally, I do remember your names and had classes with some of you. I was in the band and played trombone when Mr. Mullens was the director. I have lived and worked San Diego, Ca. since 1975.

I really appreciate the comments and the photo by Mary Gene Boteler, it brought back memories for me. And if ya'll don't mind, I'd like to share some of them with you. The girl on our left is Grace Lemon (my former sister-in-law). I remember Mrs. Lemon having a copy of the photo and a copy of the magazine the story came out in. I was also in that line that day. That day was a significant emotional event for me.

Before the march began, we all stood in line in front of our church (Bell Flower A.M.E) for an opportunity to shake Dr. King's hand. When my turn came, I remember thinking no matter what we had to go through for equality, it would be worth it. Because this man made us believe that he was there for us and would die for his beliefs.

Before that day I was content with the way things were. We lived and worshiped in our own community. Went to our own schools and played with our own friends (sounds familiar?). Even when we went to the movies and had to sit in the balcony and go outside for concessions (rain or shine) I just thought that was the way it was. I didn't realize how nice and comfortable it was downstairs. Or even that we had a right to do so.

When I would see that "third" restroom marked "colored" I had no problem using it, because that's the way it was. When I would stand in line at stores waiting to pay for merchandise and the clerk would look past me to assist a white customers first, I still waited patiently. But after that day, things were different. I don't mean that Grenada had changed, but I had. My way of thinking had.

Suddenly, I started to ask why? And later challenging the status quo.

I remember the first day we had to go to JRHS. I was determine to make new friends and live the dream Dr. King had spoken of. I remember meeting Diane Einkner and talking to her about JRHS. She was telling me about the school, where things were and how things were.

I remember people talking about us (both black and white). The fact that two young people were trying to be examples of how things should be. I remember sitting in the back of the class with Chuck Hancock and a couple of his friends joking and having fun. I don't remember all the guys names forgive I'm getting old er). Some of you even hung out with me and invited me over to your homes.Sometimes I wondered what if their parents came home and saw me there?

I also realized that those of you who chose to interact with me personally were taking a chance too. I appreciated that. Because I learned a valuable lesson that has helped me until this day. That is, I shouldn't hold all people accountable for the actions of a few.

Recently I was contacted by a reporter with the San Diego Tribune. He is doing a story on African-Americans who are cashing out of the SD area and moving back to the south. After 33 years, I've been blessed to be able to retire and go back home. I've even hired Ronnie Collins' younger brother Odie to build our dream home. The reporter interviewed my family last night. His interview with me has led him to Grenada. Where he is scheduled to go there next week to talk to others who have also moved back to Grenada from SD.

One lady, who was originally from Itta Bena and lived in SD for forty years, purchased a home over the internet (sight unseen) will be featured in the story. Ray Branscome, Joe Lee III and the honorable Diane Freelon will also be interviewed.

I am proud to be a Grenadian and look forward to going back there and contributing to the city's success. Grenada has come a long way in just forty years. And I still believe that we all (God's children) have a responsibility to make this world a better place. And I try to do that one relationship at a time. When the time comes that we do have a reunion, I will be happy to assist in any way I can.

May God bless you all.
Respectfully,

Charles H. Latham
* * *

As if turns out, Charles Latham's name does appear in Sovereignty Commission records. Here are several links, to get started:

A weekly report from 1971

Names of Black Youth Group Members

Another report, before Latham's times, is from 1958 regarding NAACP activity NAACP activities

Lots more to check out in the Files Section under Grenada County ...

Good Reading and Happy Holidays!

Susan

'Look at Civil Rights Movement as an Insurgency'

Delta at night... good time for suspicious activities...

The U.S. Civil Rights Movement as an Insurgency: This is interesting:

"Most Americans fail to appreciate that the Civil Rights movement was about the overthrow of an entrenched political order in each of the Southern states, that the segregationists who controlled this order did not hesitate to employ violence (law enforcement, paramilitary, mob) to preserve it, and that for nearly a century the federal government tacitly or overtly supported the segregationist state governments. That the Civil Rights movement employed nonviolent tactics should fool us no more than it did the segregationists, who correctly saw themselves as being at war. Significant change was never going to occur within the political system: it had to be forced. The aim of the segregationists was to keep the federal government on the sidelines. The aim of the Civil Rights movement was to "capture" the federal government -- to get it to apply its weight against the Southern states. As to why it matters: a major reason we were slow to grasp the emergence and extent of the insurgency in Iraq is that it didn't -- and doesn't -- look like a classic insurgency. In fact, the official Department of Defense definition of insurgency still reflects a Vietnam era understanding of the term. Looking at the Civil Rights movement as an insurgency is useful because it assists in thinking more comprehensively about the phenomenon of insurgency and assists in a more complete -- and therefore more useful -- definition of the term."

From Schneier on Security
A blog covering security and security technology.
* * * * *

I found it fascinating to back through some of the the Sovereignty Commission files, in light of what this writer says regarding insurgency and the civil rights movement.

Of course there were countless files on the Deacons of Defense...

Sov Comm watched Mario Savio from afar ...

Here's a warning on Mau Mau ceremonies ... no kidding...

The Mississippi Council on Human Relations had a special file ...

Mt. Beulah Christian Institute was to be watched...

And here's an report on Allen Dulles and the influence of Communism on the Civil Rights Movement ... Good Reading!
* * * * *

Also found this article interesting, “Why the Civil Rights Movement was an Insurgency, and Why it Matters” Mark Grimsley, Ph.D., Harold K. Johnson Visiting Professor of Military History, U.S. Army War College (Blog Them Out of the Stone Age)

Who Planned JFK's Assassination?

In his fascinating book on the JFK assassination, Michael Collins Piper writes in Final Judgment that Carlos Marcello "has become a favorite target for JFK assassination researchers who like to claim that 'The Mafia Killed JFK'."

But Piper asserts that Marcello was only "one cog" in the Meyer Lansky Syndicate. "[Marcello's] key placement in New Orleans -- scene of much of the pre-assassination planning -- makes him the perfect fall guy...There's a lot more to the Marcello story that meets the eye."
-----
Here's an interesting Marcello link in the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission Files.

*Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy

JFK remembered: Dallas Nov. 22, 2008

Why JFK on a Mississippi Sovereignty Commission page? In these files are records on John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Allen Dulles, J. Edgar Hoover, Lee Harvey Oswald, Guy Bannister, John D. Sullivan, James Eastland, and others.

Take a look for yourself at http://mdah.state.ms.us/arlib/contents/er/sovcom

Emmett Till TV Program Set Oct. 5

A note from civil rights film producer Keith Beauchamp --



Dear Friends,

Please remember to watch, "Murder in Black and White" hosted by Al Sharpton Oct. 5th - 8th on TV One 10pm EST (9pm CST).

Sincerely,

Keith A. Beauchamp
Executive Producer/ Director
"Murder in Black and White"
http://www.tvoneonline.com/

New Park Honors Emmett Till

The grocery store in Glendora, Miss., where Till whistled at the grocer's wife.

Emmett Till Park to open in Mississippi Delta town
By TIMOTHY R. BROWN | Associated Press Writer
1:53 PM CDT, September 16, 2008

JACKSON, Miss. - A 20-acre park and nature trail in memory of Emmett Till will open Friday in the tiny Mississippi Delta town of Glendora, almost 53 years to the day after an all-white jury acquitted two white men in the brutal murder of the black teenager.

The Emmett Till Memorial Park & Interpretive Nature Trail is an extension of a museum honoring the Chicago 14-year-old whose death helped bring national attention to the brutality of segregation. The park will include picnic pavilions, a baseball field and an outdoor stage.

Till was kidnapped Aug. 28, 1955, from his uncle's home in the rural community of Money after being accused of whistling at a white woman. Three days later, a fisherman spotted Till's mangled body in the Tallahatchie River.

The teen's body was unrecognizable, except for a ring. Till's mother insisted on a public viewing and funeral in Chicago. Pictures of the brutalized body shocked the world.

Story Continued --

Glendora is the same town where Clinton Melton was murdered, soon after the trial ended that found Till's murderers innocent.
* * *

Once the 1955 J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant trial ended in Sumner, Mississippi for the murder of Emmett Till, less than a month later in the nearby small cotton town of Glendora, a black service station attendant and father of four children was killed by a friend of Milam’s.

Elmer Kimball murdered Clinton Melton and then nineteen days later, Melton’s young wife was killed, only a week before Kimball’s murder trial opened.

Fourteen-year-old Till of Chicago was visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta at the end of August when he was kidnapped, tortured and killed after he was accused of whistling at a white store clerk.

* * * * *
Check out the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission files at http://mdah.state.ms.us/arlib/contents/er/sovcom/
where you will find numerous files under Emmett Till and Clinton Melton.

* * * * *

Then in December, Clinton Melton was murdered only four miles from where Emmett Till’s body was dumped into the Tallahatchie River six months earlier. Kimball, Milam's friend, had lived in Glendora for a short time, managing a local cotton gin, and had an account at the gas station where Melton worked.

On the day of the murder, Kimball, 35, was driving a car borrowed from his friend, J.W. Milam, one of the two men accused and acquitted of killing Till, when he drove to the gas station and asked for a fill-up. Melton’s daughter, Deloris Melton Gresham, was a toddler when her parents were killed, but she later was told what occurred at the service station:

"When Kimball drove up to the station, my father’s boss told my father to go out and fill up his car. But when he was done filling the car, Kimball went into a rage and said he only wanted a dollar’s worth of gas, and that he was going to go home and get his gun to shoot him. The gas station owner tried to talk him down, but couldn’t. He told him my father was a good negro and that he did not deserve to be hurt. He really pleaded with Kimball."

As soon as Kimball left, his boss told him that he had better leave, fast. But his car was out of gas and he had to fill it first. Kimball came right back and began shooting at my father. Another man was in his car with him, and yelled for him not to shoot. He jumped out of the car and ran into the station to hide. On arrest, Kimball claimed Melton shot at him first. McGarrh [the white owner of the gas station] denied this, adding that Melton did not have a gun at any time during the quarrel. A bullet hole was found in the windshield of Melton's parked car.

An angry Southern newspaper publisher, Hodding Carter, reacted to the murder of one of "Mississippi’s own," comparing it to the Till case in a Delta-Times editorial:

[Melton] was no out-of-state smart alec. He was home-grown and "highly respected.".... There was no question of an insult to Southern womanhood. There was only an argument about … gasoline. There was no pressure by the NAACP, "credited" with the outcome of the Till trial.... So another "not guilty" verdict was written at Sumner this week. And it served to cement the opinion of the world that no matter how strong the evidence, nor how flagrant is the apparent crime, a white man cannot be convicted in Mississippi for killing a negro.

LITTLE ATTENTION was given to the death of Gresham’s mother that occurred on or around December 21, 1955, approximately nineteen days after Clinton Melton was killed on December 3. Officially, her mother’s death was blamed on faulty driving. "Later, a relative told me that was not true, that everyone knew she was run off the road," Gresham said.

Gresham, a toddler at the time, recalled being trapped inside her mother’s car as it sank to the bottom of a murky bayou near Glendora. A relative driving by saved her life and that of her baby brother. But Beulah Melton drowned.

"My mother was a pretty woman, known for being bright and outspoken," Gresham said. "People who knew her have told me we are very much alike – both in looks and in personality."

Beulah Melton had been picking up information on her husband’s death and would have been a "problem" for Kimball at the trial, Gresham said.

From news accounts and the talk around Glendora, there was no provocation of her father’s killing. It was outright murder, according to white witnesses, including the white service station owner. The Melton family was well known in Glendora. Clinton Melton had lived there all his life and, "for once, white people spoke out against the killing of a negro. The local Lions Club adopted a resolution branding the murder ‘an outrage’ [and pledging to donate $400 to the family]," Myrlie Evers, the wife of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, later wrote.

Melton’s widow told Medgar Evers she feared justice would not be done if the NAACP interested itself in the case, and asked him not to become involved. "Her wishes were respected."

In a later investigation after her death, Medgar Evers discovered the club had given the widow only twenty-six dollars and that a local white minister had given her sixty dollars of his own.

Relatives took in Delores Melton Gresham and her siblings, and Gresham continued to live in Glendora with her grandmother. "My grandfather was so upset, he left Glendora and never came back."

Unlike some earlier Mississippi white on black murders, Kimball was charged for the murder and although not convicted, spent some time in jail:

Kimball Loses Bid for Freedom on Bond

Sumner, Miss. (AP) –December 28, 1955 – Elmer Kimball today lost his bid for freedom on bond while awaiting grand jury action on a charge of murdering a Negro man.

Three justices of the peace held a preliminary hearing for the white gin operator and refused bond. Officers returned Kimball to jail to await action of the grand jury which meets next March. The hearing was held in the little courthouse where the sensational Emmett Till trial was held. Bond usually is refused in cases where a person is accused of a crime which carries a possible death sentence upon conviction.

Kimball is charged with murder in the shotgun slaying of Clinton Melton, Negro service station attendant at nearby Glendora and father of four children. The accused man testified he fired in self-defense after someone shot at him three times. Kimball said he didn’t know who fired until he returned the fire and killed Melton.

Lee McGarrh, Melton’s employer, testified that Kimball fired without provocation, and Melton was unarmed. He said Kimball became angry at the Negro during an argument over gasoline for Kimball’s car. McGarrh said Kimball declared he was going home for his gun and [sic] kill Melton. ***

ONE WIRE SERVICE sent a staff member to cover the Kimball trial, and the only Mississippi newspaper that sent a staffer was Carter’s Greenville Delta Democrat-Times. Reporter David Halberstam remained in Mississippi after the Milam-Bryant trial and wrote as a freelancer.

This time cameras were barred, not only from the courtroom but also from the entire courthouse property, and no press table was set up. The sentiment [for conviction] was particularly strong in the Glendora community where Kimball shot Melton and where both the deceased and the defendant were well known, according to Halberstam: "Elsewhere in Talahatchie County, of course, it tended to become the usual matter of a white man and a black man."

Defining "Good" and "Bad"

Halberstam assessed the environment before the trial got started:

"A friend of mine divides the white population of Mississippi into two categories. The first and largest contains the good people of Mississippi, as they are affectionately called by editorial writers, politi­cians, and themselves. The other group is a smaller but in many ways more conspicuous faction called the peckerwoods.

"The good people will generally agree that the peckerwoods are troublemakers, and indeed several good people have told me they joined the Citizens Councils because otherwise the peckerwoods would take over the situation entirely. It is the good people who will tell you that their town has enjoyed racial harmony for many years, while it is the peckerwoods who may confide that they know how to keep the niggers in their place; it is the good people who say and mean, "We love our nigras," and it is the peckerwoods who say and mean, "If any big buck gets in my way it’ll be too damn bad."

"But while the good people would not act with the rashness of and are not governed by the hatred of the peckerwood, they are reluctant to apply society’s normal remedies to the peckerwood. Thus it is the peckerwoods who kill Negroes and the good people who acquit the peckerwoods..."

DESPITE HIS PLEAS of self-defense, Kimball was denied bond in two preliminary hearings. The biggest problem at the trial facing District Attorney Roy Johnson and County Attorney Hamilton Caldwell, according to Halberstam, was swearing in fair and impartial jurors [from] a group "sworn by birthright to pro­tecting the interest and life of the white."

The state had produced three witnesses.

First was McGarrh, "a stern little man who was a member of one of Glendora’s most respected families." McGarrh, Halberstam wrote, stuck to the same story he had told at the earlier hearings.

"He said he saw Kimball shoot the unarmed Melton. He went unshaken under cross examina­tion. The only weakness in his story is that although Kimball had given prior warning of his intention Mc­Garrh stayed inside the station with his shot gun.’

The next witness was John Henry Wilson, "a Negro in whom Kimball said he had a great deal of confidence. Wilson did not witness the shooting, but he dam­aged the self defense theory. He was standing outside the station when Kimball returned with a gun. He asked Kimball what he was going to do.

"I’m going to kill that nigger," Kimball said. "Please, sir, don’t shoot that boy. He ain’t done nothing to you," Wil­son said. "Get back or I’ll kill you too," said Kimball. Wilson ran to the back of the station."

The last witness for the state, George Woodson, testified that he was staning about ten feet away from the scene and saw Kimball walk around the side of the station with a gun, and that he did not see any gun in Melton’s hand.

"The defense lacked eye witnesses and thus tried to shake the testimony of the state’s witnesses. Its witnesses came up with only minor points," according to Halberstam.

"But more significant than their testimony were their positions—a sheriff, a deputy sheriff, and a chief of police."

Apparently Kimball did the most damage to himself when he got on the stand, as Halberstam told it:

"[He] got up there before those twelve Mississippians and told them a story about his relations with Melton that flatly contradicts all the Mississippi mores…. Kimball said he went inside and told McGarrh that Clinton was getting pretty nasty and asked him to total up his account and he’d be back and settle up; when he returned a few minutes later someone started firing at him, hit him, and he went back to his car and got his shot gun.

"Kimball’s story would be hard for any jury to believe, because they would know…. "[You] cannot provoke a Negro attendant to talk like that no matter how much you irritate him, particularly a trusted Negro such as Clinton Melton."

"The jury also knew that "no white peckerwood gin manager, the best friend of J. W. Milam, would let a Negro talk like that without doing a little whupping right there on the spot."

AFTER FOUR AND one-half hours, the jurors walked in and announced their decision to acquit:

Sumner, Miss. (AP) – Elmer Otis Kimball was acquitted of murder late yesterday in the shotgun slaying of a 33-year-old Negro. "I wasn’t sure justice would be done," said the 35-year-old white Glendora cotton gin operator, "but I should have known." A 12-man, all-white jury, made up mostly of farmers, deliberated more than four hours before freeing Kimball.

Two witnesses testified they saw Kimball blast Clinton Melton three times with a shotgun December 3 at a Glendora service station. Witnesses said the shooting was an aftermath of an argument between Kimball and Melton over gasoline to be put into Kimball’s car. Kimball testified that Melton cursed him during the argument. Defense Atty. J. W. Kellum said Kimball fired the fatal shots in self-defense. Kimball said three shots were fired at him before he opened fire, one wounding him in the shoulder. He showed a scar and brought in a doctor who verified the gunshot wound.

But neither Lee McGarrh, white owner of the service station, not George Woodson, Negro, who said he witnessed the slaying, said they saw or heard Melton fire. No weapon was found on Melton’s body or in his car. The trial took place in the same courtroom where half-brothers J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant were found innocent six months ago of the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, Chicago Negro. Kellum was one of five defense attorneys in the Till case.

****

Times were now more dangerous for Mississippi’s African Americans. One white Glendora resident, asked by a reporter for his opinion of both the Till and Melton murders told him "There’s open season on the Negroes now. They’ve got no protection, and any peckerwood who wants can go out and shoot himself one."

Clinton and Beulah Melton’s daughter never moved from the Delta. She keeps a picture of her mother who looks like she could be her twin. While she has never owned a picture of her father, Gresham said she would have liked to know him better and continues to question what happened to her mother on that frightening day.

Yet her story had a happy note. In 2003, Keith Beauchamp, a New York filmmaker, discovered a copy of an old newsreel showing the story of Clinton Melton’s murder. Beauchamp incorporated the reel into a documentary on Emmett Till, and made sure that Gresham had a copy for her family.

The following year, Beauchamp's documentary was shown on a Chicago television station, resulting quite by chance in one of Gresham’s brothers discovering his sister. A family reunion took place that summer.

"It was joyous," Delores Gresham said. "We talk to each other on the phone several times a week, and I’m meeting other relatives through my brother."

(An excerpt from "Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited," by Susan Klopfer. Copyright 2005 Susan Klopfer.)

Fifth Circuit vacates conviction of James Ford Seale

A three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has vacated the conviction of former Ku Klux Klan (KKK) member James Ford Seale for his involvement in the 1964 deaths of two 19-year-old black teens. Seale was sentenced to three life terms in August 2007, two months after his conviction in Mississippi federal court. AP has more.

Seale was convicted in June 2007 of kidnapping and conspiracy in the abductions of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both 19, who disappeared from Franklin County in Mississippi May 2, 1964. Their decomposed bodies were later pulled from the muddy waters of the Mississippi River.

The 20-page ruling noted the alleged crimes occurred in 1964 and the indictment against Seale was issued in 2007.

Background

Wickipedia carries a summary of this incident in which the Mississippi teens were killed ..

Klansmen abducted the two African American men, Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both 19, as they were hitchhiking on May 2, 1964, on their way to a party. According to F.B.I. records, Seale suspected Dee of civil-rights activity and told the young men he was a revenue agent, investigating moonshine stills, and then drove them into the Homochitto National Forest between Meadville and Natchez. Other Klansmen followed, and as Seale held a sawed-off shotgun, the other men tied the young men to a tree and severely beat them with long, skinny sticks (called "bean sticks" in Mississippi because they're often used to "stalk" beans in gardens). According to the January 2007 indictment, the Klansmen then took the pair, who were reportedly still alive, to a nearby farm where Seale reportedly duct-taped their mouths and hands. Then the Klansmen wrapped the bloody pair in a plastic tarp and put them into the trunk of another Klansman's red Ford (the deceased Ernest Parker, according to FBI records) and drove almost 100 miles to the Ole River near Tallulah, Louisiana. They had to drive through Louisiana to get there, but the backwater was actually located in Warren County, Mississippi, meaning that they were killed in Mississippi.

There the pair were tied to an old Jeep engine block and sections of railroad track rails with chains before being dumped in the river, reportedly while they were still alive.[5] According to a Klan informant, Seale would say later that he would have shot them first, but didn't want to get blood all over the boat.

The bodies of the pair were found two months later during the search for three missing civil rights workers. The FBI launched an investigation, and presented their findings to local District Attorney Lenox Forman. FBI agents and Mississippi Highway Patrol officers arrested Seale and fellow Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards on Nov. 6, 1964, shortly after the discovery of the bodies, based on informant tips. They were released on Nov. 11, after family members posted $5,000 bond each. On Jan. 11, 1965, District Attorney Lenox Forman filed a “motion to dismiss affidavits” with Justice of the Peace Willie Bedford, who signed the motion the same day. The motions state: “… that in the interest of justice and in order to fully develop the facts in this case, the affidavits against James Seale and Charles Edwards should be dismissed by this Court without prejudice to the Defendants or to the State of Mississippi at this time in order that the investigation may be continued and completed for presentation to a Grand Jury at some later date.”

More from Wickipedia ..

From the Sovereignty Commission files, in a brief search, I was able to find a 1966 AP story naming Edwards as a Klan leader..

An AP story about the probe under Dee's name ..

More from the Mississippi Eyewitness (an interesting 65 page document)

Another newspaper article from Meadville as the two KKK members were released "in the interest of justice" ...

An article under Seale ..

And I'm sure if we keep digging, there MIGHT be more...

Aha! Investigative reports under Forman's files ... (search under L. L. Forman, the district attorney)


Probably there's more. Let me know what you dig out of these files. sk