My friend Ben Greenberg and I share activist fathers in civil rights during the 50s and early 60s. He sent me the following. Ben is actively pursing the murderers who are still alive, and is mentioned below. He has tremendous respect for Jerry Mitchell who wrote this column. I support Ben 100% in his work, and I will report on the results as they come in.
http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20090215/NEWS/902150356/1001/news#pluckcomments
This is important work and I am glad to know Ben.
Regards, David Fillingham
February 15, 2009Researchers: Cold-case list too shortJerry Mitchelljmitchell@clarionledger.com
A day after the FBI asked for the public's assistance in solving 43 unpunished killings in Mississippi during the civil rights era, researchers say they know of at least 18 more slayings that haven't been included.
"There definitely needs to be a bigger list," said Margaret Burnham, professor at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston.
On Thursday, the FBI highlighted 43 killings between 1955 and 1967 in Mississippi.
Burnham said research has uncovered 11 additional cases. She said one name the FBI released is misspelled - it should be the Rev. J.E. Evasingston, who was killed in 1955 in Tallahatchie.
Ben Greenberg of Boston, a journalist and blogger investigating the Feb. 28, 1964, killing of Clifton Walker, north of Woodville, said he's run across seven names in his research that don't appear on the FBI list and weren't cited by Burnham's research. "And there might be more," he said.
Three of those - Lula Mae Anderson, Eli Jackson and Dennis Jones - were found dead in a car in December 1963, not far from Poor House Road, where Walker is believed to have been killed by Klansmen.
FBI officials could not be reached for comment, but agents previously have acknowledged the names they collected came mainly from a list of slayings gathered by the Southern Poverty Law Center - a list center officials say was never meant to be comprehensive.
Burnham said they have found the additional names through searches of archives kept by civil rights organizations and others. A number of those killings were contained in the NAACP papers, investigated by then-Mississippi NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers.
Among the 43 victims listed is Louis Allen, who was killed Jan. 31, 1964, after he told a federal grand jury that a Mississippi lawmaker did not kill voting-rights activist Herbert Lee in self-defense in Liberty in 1961.
Allen's son, Henry, said he hopes publicizing the name will bring in more leads for the killing that took place 45 years ago.
"We put out a $25,000 reward, and we haven't heard a thing," he said. "If the FBI is working on it, it's all good."
Alvin Sykes of Kansas City is the architect of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act, which creates a cold-cases unit inside the Justice Department to gather information for possible prosecution of unpunished killers from the civil-rights era.
He said he's encouraged the FBI released these names in order to get public input, "But this is not an exhaustive list of the actual cases of the civil rights era in Mississippi."
He said more names likely will arise in a forum in Jackson later this year where victims' families can come forward and share names and information. No date has been set for that forum.
"We've been made aware of names that haven't been turned in to the FBI, and we will make them aware of them,"Sykes said.
Surprisingly, all seven additional names that Greenberg found were either mentioned or referenced in the FBI file itself.
He has obtained a copy of the file of the Walker case, but some of the most important information has been redacted, such as the names of the two suspects recommended for arrest by the FBI, he said.
If the FBI is truly interested in solving these cases, the entire files should be released to the families and the public, he said.
He recalled sharing some of the FBI files with the Walker family - files the family had never seen.
"A full approach to justice involves more than just procedures in the courtroom," he said. "It also involves as full accounting as possible of the truth in the community where the murders occurred."
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