In The South, Murder Continues
Muth, Jerry De
THE SOUTH may be changing, but the old South has not disappeared. In May 1969, for example, an all-white federal court jury in Meridian, Mississippi, acquitted three Ku Klux Klansmen accused of...
...Cecil Meyers and Joseph Sims, after being acquitted by a county jury for the slaying of Lemuel Penn, attacked a Southern Christian Leadership Conference photographer in Crawfordville, Georgia, and then were arrested for attempting to beat a black farmer...
...Yet lawenforcement officers, local officials, and civic leaders all pushed for convictions...
...207...
...WWWC-Midwest, Room 1506, 116 South Michigan, Chicago, Illinois, 60603...
...Since early 1963, at least 33 persons have been killed in the South, 19 of them in Mississippi, because they were black or because they were involved in civil rights...
...The state was able to obtain the eight convictions because in all but two cases the killings were not related to civil rights...
...Two won mistrials, one was found guilty of arson and sentenced to ten years in prison, and the other two received Internes Wanted The World Without War Council of the United States is looking for people who think controlling the threat of war is the central political problem of our time, and who want to spend a year finding out what it means to work seriously on that problem...
...Three times 16 persons had been indicted on federal charges of conspiring to "intimidate, coerce and threaten" Dahmer, but the first two times the indictments were dismissed and it was not until early last May, 40 months after the crime and 16 months after the third set of indictments, that any of the 16 were tried...
...James Reeb, who was murdered while aiding a voter registration drive in Selma, Alabama, federal charges were lodged against four persons, but the government never carried the case any further...
...It may be "poetic justice," but it's not yet justice...
...The first, which Bowers had won in January, was the second 205 COMMENTS AND,OPINIONS mistrial in less than one year in the county court where he was being tried for the murder of Dahmer...
...In Anniston, one of Alabama's more moderate towns, Willie Brewster, a factory worker and father of four, who was not involved in civil rights, was shot on July 15, 1965...
...the other was the Dahmer case...
...Herbert Damon Strange, while free on bond for the July 1965 slaying of Willie Brewster, was arrested again in May 1966...
...One of those indicted, Klan Imperial Wizard Sam Holloway Bowers, Jr., thus won the second mistrial that year...
...This poor record concerning these 33 slayings has not only encouraged lawlessness on the part of others, but it has also permitted some persons to become involved in further crimes...
...Maturity, a high tolerance for frustration, an interest in forcing change without violence, a need to be involved in solving crucial human and social problems—these are essential...
...Jonathan Daniels, who went to Alabama to aid a voter registration drive...
...Consequently it has not yet been possible to obtain evidence or confessions to assure successful prosecution...
...Three were tried, and freed, on state charges of murder...
...Willie B. Tucker, who was in interstate travel when slain...
...Medgar Evers, Mississippi NAACP leader who was working to enable blacks to gain their voting and other rights...
...At least 74 persons were involved in those killings, but only 46 persons were indicted on federal charges and only 37 on state charges...
...An examination of the other convictions reveals that the crimes were especially reprehensible and did not involve persons active in civil rights...
...Of those two cases, one was the slaying of Martin Luther King, Jr., for which James Earl Ray pleaded guilty...
...Federal action could have been taken in all of these cases...
...But on November 5, 1966, Strange got into a fight in an Anniston honky-tonk and was killed by a spray of bullets in the back...
...In the case of Rev...
...In May 1969, for example, an all-white federal court jury in Meridian, Mississippi, acquitted three Ku Klux Klansmen accused of murdering a black civil rights leader and could not agree on verdicts for seven other Klansmen also implicated in the crime...
...Herbert Damon Strange, after the jury deliberated a day and a half, was convicted on a reduced charge of second-degree murder, sentenced to ten years in prison, and then freed on bond...
...Once they 206 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS got White to a secluded area, they shot him 17 times with a rifle, blew the top of his head off with a shotgun, and then dumped his body in a creek...
...Ben Chester White, who was murdered by Klansmen because of his race...
...State officials never took any action against those who killed 16 persons...
...Such an outcome is also part of the old South...
...After the Birmingham church bombing in which four young girls were killed, Al Lingo, head of the state police, arrested three men with Klan backgrounds, charging them only with illegal possession of explosives...
...Before the Dahmer slaying, Hamilton had been freed five times on charges of beating civil rights workers...
...Five of the thirteen indicted were ever tried in county court...
...WWWC-Northwest, 4235 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle, Washington, 98105...
...Wilson also had been indicted by the county grand jury on a murder charge but has not yet been brought to trial...
...BUT THE PROBLEM does not rest solely with juries...
...Sam Holloway Bowers, Jr., under federal indictment for the June 1964 Philadelphia slayings, was later indicted for the January 1966 fire-bombing that took the life of Dahmer...
...In Birmingham on September 15, 1963, one of two white youths on a motor scooter fired twice at two black youths on a bicycle and 13-year-old Virgil Ware fell dead...
...And then none were convicted...
...For example, the killers of Lemuel Penn, who was in the midst of interstate travel when shot, were brought to trial by the Justice Department but not the alleged killers of Moore and Tucker...
...He was charged with beating and kidnapping a white man who was riding in a car with a black man, and again he was freed on bond...
...Instead, it issued praise for the conduct of law enforcement officers (including Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, later convicted in federal court) for their behavior in the face of "drastic provocation by outside agitators...
...Berkeley, California Anne Stadler Executive Secretary, World Without War Council of the United States life sentences on murder charges...
...In federal courts only 52 percent of those indicted, 38 men, were ever brought to trial, and only 12 of those 38 were convicted...
...The WWWCUS Interne Program offers that opportunity...
...The youth who had fired the fatal shots was then placed on two years' probation and sent home...
...Sentences were generally light...
...BUT NOT ONLY SOUTHERN STATES have been guilty of inaction, so has the federal government...
...Another of the seven who won a mistrial in federal court was Charles Clifford Wilson...
...They were brought to trial on charges of firstdegree murder but were convicted on reduced charges of second-degree manslaughter and sentenced to seven months in prison...
...The FBI, conducting a fruitless investigation, commented, "This investigation was prejudiced by premature arrests made by the Alabama Highway Patrol...
...Internes can expect practical experience working either with a World Without War Council or with staff and lay leadership of a major organization, developing educational programming and helping to conceptualize and organize public activity in the war/peace field...
...The white youths were caught and signed confessions...
...Also indicted by the federal government for the Dahmer slaying was Mordaunt Hamilton, Sr., a Hattiesburg hardware dealer...
...In the triple slayings in Philadelphia, Mississippi, for example, a county grand jury refused to issue any indictments...
...No federal action was taken in such killings as those of : •William Moore, the postman who was walking from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, to appeal to the governor to grant blacks their constitutional rights...
...Although a jury indicted the three Klansmen, one was acquitted, one won a mistrial in 1967, and the third has never been brought to trial...
...These figures do not include repeat indictments...
...More recently, in Natchez, Mississippi, in June 1966, three white men lured 65-year-old Ben Chester White from his home by asking him to help search for a lost dog...
...The ten were being tried for the first time on federal charges in connection with the January 1966 slaying of Vernon Dahmer whose store and home in Hattiesburg was fire-bombed...
...College graduates are preferred, but a college degree is not essential...
...Three persons were indicted, two persons tried, one of them acquitted and the other found guilty...
...The three were convicted in Recorder's Court, sentenced to 90 days and fined $100 each...
...After one of these acquittals, he even attacked the civil rights worker a second time on his way out of the court house...
...And when on December 4, 1964, the FBI arrested 21 men in connection with the killings, the state said it would not file any charges of its own...
...Information about the program is available from The Office of the President, 1730 Grove Street, Berkeley, California, 94709...
...They appealed and the state circuit court overturned the convictions, ending the state's role in the case...
...Participants also have a full program of seminars and independent study focused on: democratic methods of changing public attitudes, American politics and the political process, international institutions and world order, world development, disarmament, and ten other substantive areas which comprise the war/peace field...
...Two days before the county grand jury indicted him, Wilson received the distinguished service award from the Junior Chamber of Commerce in Laurel, a Klan stronghold located about 30 miles northeast of Hattiesburg...
...In county courts, only 23 of the 37 persons indicted on state charges were ever brought to trial and a mere eight convicted...
Vol. 17 • May 1970 • No. 3
