Civil Rights Author Speaks Out on FBI Investigation of Civil Rights Martyrs Murders; Medgar Evers Murder Investigation Reopens?

Civil rights author, Susan Klopfer (Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, 2005 ) said she is not "at all surprised" the FBI is taking a second look at the murder of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers. Killed in the summer of 1963 in the driveway of his Jackson, Mississippi home, "Evers was a beloved man whose murder struck hard on those who worked with him, and on so many others outside of Mississippi who knew of his bravery,” Klopfer said.

The FBI announced Monday it is examining claims by Byron De La Beckwith Jr. of a conspiracy to kill Evers nearly a half century ago. Beckwith’s father was found guilty of the murder in 1994 and later died in prison.

"We're pursuing every avenue that comes up" in connection with killings from the civil rights era, said Tye Breedlove, spokesman for the FBI in Jackson. "We're looking under every stone," Breedlove told Jerry Mitchell of The Clarion Ledger.

Beckwith, in an interview with Mitchell, stated he “might need to get ready for a visit. It won't be the first time they visited me, and it won't be the last."

In 2006, Justice Department officials announced an initiative to look into killings from the civil rights era in which suspects had gone unpunished. Since then, the FBI has examined more than 100 killings, some of which remain under investigation, including the murder of Emmett Till.

The June 12, 1963, assassination of Evers has not been reinvestigated because of the 1994 conviction of Byron De La Beckwith Sr. The former Marine, who received a Purple Heart in World War II, was sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2001.

Klopfer said that when researching this murder in 2004, she spoke with several people living in Mississippi, including a prison guard (now deceased) and a waitress “with interesting stories to tell” about Evers’s murder. “It was always whispered around the Delta that others were involved, and that Beckwith may not have even been in Jackson when this assassination took place." Beckwith, at the time, resided in the small Delta town of Greenwood. 

In a recent six-hour interview with The Clarion-Ledger, Beckwith Jr. insisted to Mitchell that his father is innocent and shared purported details about the killing that never emerged in his father's first two trials in 1964 in which the white Citizens' Council raised money to pay for his three attorneys.

“I sincerely hope the FBI will take this new information seriously and that they have more success than with the re-investigation of the murder of Emmett Till, who was also killed in Mississippi. Most of us who know the Till story still wonder why Carolyn Bryant was never called before the grand jury. It’s most likely she was on the scene when Emmett was taken from his uncle’s home.

"So why won’t the investigators demand she finally tell what she knows before she dies?”

Bryant, who now resides in Greenwood, was married at the time of Till's murder to one of the two men found innocent of killing the 14-year-old Chicago school boy in 1955. Both men later confessed to the brutal murder that sparked the modern civil rights movement.

Klopfer researched and wrote two Mississippi civil rights books while living on the grounds of Parchman Penitentiary with her husband, Fred, who at the time worked as the prison’s chief psychologist. She wrote a third book on the topic in 2010.

“Our living at Parchman put me only a few miles away from where young Till was murdered in August of 1955. Some of the people who were living at the time of his and Evers’s later murder seemed eager to tell me what they knew, and several had interesting information to share – stories that were quite different from what had been reported in the news at the time," Klopfer said.

“Many more civil rights era murders need to be put under the FBI microscope, and this includes the murder of Cleve McDowell, a Mississippi lawyer who was killed in 1997. McDowell spent much of his professional life investigating these and other murders. He was mentored by Evers when he first went to college in Jackson and worked for Dr. Martin Luther King after he completed law school. McDowell was raised in the same small town of Drew, near the site of Till's murder, and was the same age as Till. All of McDowell's research papers were destroyed or taken away when a fire broke out in his vacated office, only six months after McDowell was murdered under suspicious circumstances.

"The brutal murders of so many civil rights heroes, including not only Till, Evers and McDowell, but also Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett -- two elderly civil rights advocates from Charleston -- have not been given the attention they deserve," Klopfer said.

"Maybe this new information coming from Beckwith's son will make a difference. I hope so. These important civil rights stories must be told. These heroes must not be forgotten."

Jury selection begins Monday for a 45-year-old civil rights case in Alabama

Kathy Lohr of National Public Radio reports that Jury selection begins Monday for a 45-year-old civil rights case in Alabama. A former state trooper is charged with murder in the shooting death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a black protester who was killed in 1965. Jackson's death united civil rights leaders across the country and led to the historic Selma-to-Montgomery march.

Marion, Ala., 1965...In the Deep South of 1965, segregation was the law of the land. Anyone who protested against the system was met with violence. Not far from Selma, Ala., in Marion, a group of African Americans was gathering in a church at night. Alabama state troopers, including James Bonard Fowler, were called in to break up the meeting, and, using billy clubs, they began beating protesters, including 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson.

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Bob Dylan to Release Ninth Volume Bootleg Series; The Death of Emmett Till, Included

Rolling Stone
By Daniel Kreps
Aug 24, 2010 9:48 AM EDT

Bob Dylan will release the ninth volume of his Bootleg Series on October 19th, he has announced, confirming recent rumors. This edition will be the first official collection of the Witmark Demos, 47 songs that Dylan recorded between 1962 and 1964 for his first two publishers, Leeds Music and M. Witmark & Sons. The tracks -- which Dylan performed with only acoustic guitar, harmonica and some piano, all before he was 24 -- include early versions of classics like "Blowin' in the Wind," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'," plus 15 more recorded exclusively for the sessions, including "Ballad for a Friend," "The Death of Emmett Till" and "Guess I'm Doing Fine." The deluxe set will feature a booklet of photos from those sessions and in-depth liner notes by Colin Escott.

Rolling Stone, Continued

Civil Rights Author Talks About 55th Anniversary of Emmett Till's Murder; Spark That Set Off Modern Civil Rights Movement

Susan Klopfer, author
Who Killed Emmett Till
Aug. 27, 2010

This Saturday is the 55th anniversary of the murder of 14 year-old Emmett Till, an incident that galvanized the modern civil rights movement.

Do you know the story of Emmett Till? I am always surprised at how many people don’t know this story or recognize its historical significance. Recently, I met an anthropologist from a well-known Midwestern university who had never heard of Till. After telling her the story, she was deeply concerned that neither she or her students knew about Till. The story is still quite new and is just now becoming part of contemporary history taught in schools. But it is an important story and your children should hear it. Is your school teaching this history? Call and ask. You will be surprised.

In observance, the Emmett Till Foundation today kicks off a weekend of observances commemorating the 55th anniversary of his murder with its "A Time of Reflection and Remembrance" gala. On Saturday, the foundation will launch the "Never Again" campaign against social injustice, which continues the positive activist message of Till's late mother, Mamie Till Mobley.

The campaign includes the pledge:

I pledge to never again allow the ugly parts of our past history to become the present.
I will forever stand up against racism, hatred, injustice and crimes against our youth.
I will always stand up for peace, justice and equality for all.

The campaign's launch is on the actual anniversary of Till's lynching, which shares the same historic date of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and Barack Obama's acceptance of the Democratic nomination for president.

For decades, Emmett Till's story has been defined by justice denied and justice delayed. But there is now an effort to mark a new and more hopeful chapter in the story of the Chicago teen whose savage killing galvanized the civil rights movement.

"We want to make sure people understand what hate looks like, and Emmett's story includes all of that. But where do we go from there? We want to flip the script on injustice and move forward," said Deborah Watts, co-founder and president of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation.

Read more from the Chicago Tribune at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/ct-x-c-emmett-till-foundation-campaig20100827,0,1316443.story

Meanwhile, a second group, the Emmett Till Memorial Commission has requested permission to place one marker in front of the location of the former grocery store called Bryant’s where Till allegedly whistled at a white woman, and another marker at the East Money Church of God.

Read more at http://uprisingradio.org/home/?p=15361

And an unnamed businessman from Texas is seeking to restore the grocery story in Money, Mississippi when young Till whistled at a white woman, a gesture that sparked the modern civil rights movement.

Today, Jerry Mitchel from Jackson, Mississippi wrote about the plan: http://blogs.clarionledger.com/jmitchell/2010/08/27/restoring-history-before-its-too-late/

I have spoken with the person, as well, and he seems quite serious about his plan..

If you don't know this important civil rights story (and the history of the modern civil rights movement), please pick up a book and start reading. Or, check out my ebook, Who Killed Emmett Till? You can download half of this book for free!!

Go to Smashwords at http://www.smashwords.com/b/8175 for a free sample.

Meanwhile, some say that Till's death kicked off the civil rights movement, but this is not so. The civil rights movement began the day that people were enslaved and brought to this country. There are many historical accounts of black men and women resisting enslavement starting back then. After the Civil War, following the First World War and leading into the Second World War, there are stories of significant attempts by individuals and groups to overcome enslavement and mistreatment. Till's 1955 murder caught the attention of Rosa Parks who then refused to sit at the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. It was Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. who then took the reigns of the modern civil rights movement.

Susan Klopfer

Sixth Trial for Curtis Flowers, Mississippi African American, Opens June 7 in Winona; Prosecutors 'Set a Record'

Friends of Justice
Executive Director, Dr. Alan Bean
email: abean@friendsofjustice.netcell: 817.688.6765
office: 817.457.0025
Mailing Adress: 3415 Ainsworth Court, Arlington, Texas 76016

The case against Curtis Flowers [Winona, Mississippi] started with a bloody footprint. It took just over a week to link the print pattern to a Grant Hill Fila running shoe. Then a policeman remembered seeing a Fila shoe box in the bedroom closet of Connie Mae Moore, Curtis Flowers’ live-in girlfriend.

They couldn’t prosecute Curtis on one piece of circumstantial evidence, but Doug Evans and his investigator, John Johnson, knew they had their man.

That’s how wrongful conviction begins.

[Editor's note: On the morning of July 16, 1996, four people were brutally murdered at a furniture store in the small Mississippi town of Winona. By 11:00 am everybody had heard the news: Bertha Tardy, the proprietor of Tardy ‘s Furniture, had been killed execution style. Carmen Rigby, Tardy’s longtime bookkeeper, had suffered the same fate, as had hired hands, Bobo Stewart and Robert Golden. Golden was black, the other three victims were white. Six months later, Curtis Flowers, a young black Winona resident who had worked three days for Bertha Tardy, was arrested and charged with the brutal murder of four innocent people.Thirteen years, $300,000 and five trials later, Mr. Flowers remains behind bars and the state has been unable to obtain a final conviction. This sixth trial opens June 7. Dr. Alan Bean, a forensic historian, has been investigating the incident and has much to say about what has take place, thus far.]

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Author Shares Personal Experiences Tracking Down Civil Rights Stories

In observance of Black History Month, the Fairfield, Iowa Public Library is hosting a free program by Susan Klopfer called "The Mississippi Story Behind Emmett Till" at 7:15 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 22.

Susan Klopfer, the author of several books, including the civil rights non-fiction book "Who Killed Emmett Till?" is an award-winning journalist and former Prentice Hall editor.

The author will have a drawing during the program, giving away a free copy of the audiobook version of "Who Killed Emmett Till?" narrated by Fairfield’s own Jeffrey Hedquist. Refreshments will be served and there will also be a Q&A session.

Ms. Klopfer will be interviewed tomorrow on Thursday, Feb. 18, on the talk show called “Tanner & Moore,” which airs from 7-8 p.m. on KRUU-LP (100.1 on the FM dial)
On “Tanner & Moore,” BBC Filmmaker Stuart Tanner discusses current global events with KRUU Station Manager James Moore, revolving around a new theme weekly. Their show is replayed the following Monday from 7-8 a.m.

Ms. Klopfer lived in the Mississippi Delta for two years on the grounds of the state's most infamous prison while her husband worked as a psychologist at Parchman Penitentiary five years ago. Dr. Fred Klopfer is currently a psychologist at the state mental hospital in Mount Pleasant, IA.

The author spent long hours traveling around the Delta, gathering stories about the civil rights movement from people who took part. She will share new facts about the Emmett Till murder and other intriguing civil rights stories. She interviewed first-hand witnesses to key incidents surrounding the 1955 murder that took place just a few miles from the Klopfer’s home at Parchman.

Emmett Till was a 14-year-old Chicago schoolboy whose death inspired Rosa Parks to take her stand in Montgomery, Alabama. While visiting his cousins in Mississippi, Emmett was lynched for whistling at a white store owner's wife. Over in Alabama, Parks had already been planning her act of civil disobedience to sit in the “white section” of a city bus. After hearing about the acquittal of Till's murderers, she and the NAACP knew the time had finally arrived to stand up to the “Jim Crow” laws in the South. Emmett Till's death is now considered to be the spark that set off the modern civil rights movement.

Ms. Klopfer will share other compelling civil rights stories, like the story of the five Carter children who decided on their own to integrate their town's schools and signed necessary school forms while their parents were out of town. White students and most teachers taunted them nearly every school day, and their parents were threatened with guns. But all of the Carter children ended up with college degrees.

The author sheds new light on the recently released records from Mississippi’s secret Sovereignty Commission. With a mission to investigate and halt all integration attempts, the commission operated as a spy agency within the state government from 1956 to 1972.

Those without a radio may listen to the live streaming radio show by clicking on the words “Listen Live” in the upper right-hand corner of the home page at:

http://www.kruufm.com

Archives of “Tanner & Moore” radio interviews may be heard at: http://www.kruufm.com/station/archives/535

To learn more about the “Who Killed Emmett Till?” audiobook, go to: http://www.susanklopfer.cdtdigital.com

To learn more about the author, go to her website at: http://susanklopfer.com

FBI Cold Case Initiative offers little comfort for families

Louis Allen, killed in Mississippi

So it's not just me that is unhappy over the Cold Case Initiative and the lack of leadership coming from the FBI.

If you will recall, my friends Gwen Dailey and Nina Zachery-Black, relatives of Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett, are pretty disgusted with FBI agents and the bureaucracy surrounding their efforts to learn what happened to their grandmothers who were killed in a suspicious car wreck in 1966. Recently, I spoke to a great-granddaughter, Dianna Mann, and she says here family who lived several states away were so afraid to attend the funeral of Adlena Hamlett, they stayed home.

The names of these two women were never added to the cold case list put out by the FBI and the reasons these women have been given are simply preposterous.

Let's see -- Why didn't their relatives call the police?

Answer: If you were black and called the police in those days, it was the same as calling up the Klan and asking for help.

Here's another comment by an FBI agent: "Well, it was too long ago and it was in Mississippi."

My response to that one would have been, ..."no sh**t Sherlock."

Then there is a law school student who seems to think that "summary judgements" have something to do with criminal cases. She says she "can't get one" for the Keglar and Hamlett case because someone found a white guy who says he was asleep in the back of the car but knows what happened. That's pathetic.
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Apparently, there are some attempts, once again, to solve the Louis Allen cold case (Libertyville, Miss.). This case deserves to be at the top of the cold case list.

His murder had been brewing since 1961 when he witnessed the killing of local NAACP President Herbert Lee for registering Black voters by state legislator E. H. Hurst. Under threats, Mr. Allen was forced to testify that Mr. Hurst killed Mr. Lee in self-defense.

“My grandfather contacted the Justice Department and the FBI for help but the FBI agent assigned to the case leaked it back to the local officials, the sheriff and the judge, who were members of the Klan,” Louis Allen Ali, grandson and namesake of Louis Allen, told The Final Call last month.

Louis Allen suffered years of threats, jailings and harassment. Pleas to the FBI for assistance were refused. Mr. Allen was making final arrangements to move to Milwaukee the day he was killed by shotgun blasts.
* * * * *

The problem with the FBI investigating these cases now, is that they are compromised. You would know this if you have read about the secret COINTELPRO operations that were run against black leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcom X. The FBI agents were in the Delta, too. These records need to be opened IF the FBI is going to be square with the cold case initiative.

Mississippi had its own spy agency back then, the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, that hired FBI agents, military spies,CIA and you name it to make life miserable to its black citizens. Some of the Sov Com files were opened to the public but many still sit in the basements of the relatives of Mississippi's former leaders.

A black lawyer, Cleve McDowell, was murdered under VERY suspicious circumstances in 1997. Most likely he had lots of records (that walked away after he was killed) tha would have helped answer questions from who killed Emmett Till to who killed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Like the FBI, Mississippi has "records" problems, too.
* * * * *

The family of Louis Allen of Libertyville, Miss. wants to see their relative's case solved. At least it's on the list, but ... read about how they feel about the FBI and today's agents:

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_6638.shtml

Take some time to read their story.

* * * *

IF you are reading this and can come up with information to help solve this case, or any cold case, please contact me and I will see that it gets forwarded to the right person.

We've asked Sen. Al Franken's office to take a look at the Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett case. Maybe since relatives are from Minnesota he will help. But don't hold your breath...I'm breathless.

There are good people, of course, who are working hard on these cases. keith Beauchamp is traveling with the FBI asking people with any information they may have on cold cases to speak up. He IS the reason we are finally looking at cold cases because he researched the Emmett Till case for years and finally got people involved and working on this and other cases.

* * *

Susan

FBI Won't Open Case Files; Assassination Records of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Still Suppressed

And these are the people who are "solving" the civil rights cold cases?

Nearly half a century after the height of the civil rights movement, hundreds of thousands of pages of government files about the volatile era remain shielded from the American public, buried in FBI field office cabinets, blocked by resistant bureaucracies, or available only with large sections blacked out, according to US officials and researchers.

The situation has prompted a new push in Congress, led by Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, to require that all records relating to the life and death of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. be located, reviewed, and released by a review board at the National Archives similar to those established for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and for Nazi war criminals.

Story Continued--

Who Killed Emmett Till e-Book

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by Susan Klopfer, a new e-book about this important civil rights event that took place in the Mississippi Delta



I moved to the Mississippi Delta in 2003 as the Emmett Till cold case was opened. Living on the grounds of Parchman Penitentiary, a notorious compound with a fascinating history, gave me a unique opportunity to take a fresh look at this civil rights ground-breaking event and to meet some of the people who still had the story fresh in their hearts and minds.