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."

Violence Isn't Limited to Arizona, and Mental Health Laws Must Change, Says Civil Rights Author

Susan Klopfer
Author, Who Killed Emmett Till?
sklopfer@gmail.com

As a researcher and author of several civil rights books, I would like to comment on the violent Tucson killing of a nine-year-old girl and a federal judge, the wounding of a congresswoman and killing of others.

I fear that our lack of available mental health services for many people who need help, along with the increasingly violent political rhetoric, will lead to more of these incidences. Violent acts committed by people like this young man who shot U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, are clearly on the rise -- at a time when some politicians are calling for the repeal of public health care and mental health care services, and at a time when they and their supporters believe it is okay to encourage violence ("second amendment remedies") on websites and in public.

Prisons are expensive solutions and are not the best answer for an educated society. We need to consider several changes, including more mental health training for everyone. Too many people seem to be very unsure as to what to do when they run into mental health issues or even how to recognize the signs of mental illness. There is too much ignorance about mental health even among journalists, teachers, politicians, ministers and others who should know better. I did notice the community college handled this young man appropriately and so did the military. The school recommended mental health assessment because that's all they could do, and the military took note of his drug use and didn’t allow him to join.

Current mental health laws often make it hard to involuntarily commit a seriously mentally ill person, even if their behavior is quite dangerous. Typically, if such people are committed, treatment in most states only lasts about five days and then the patient is released and given some medicine that he or she would probably not take. Such a person often ends up being very angry upon release, ending up in jail. There needs to be required follow-through counseling, covered by insurance or public assistance. It is going to take better understanding of mental illness, changes in laws and a lot more money for our safety.

I certainly hope that mental health issues will become part of the national discussion that must take place following this horrific shooting. Surely those who continue to oppose health coverage for all need to step back and realize that part of health care services are mental health services. Can we really afford to cut out health and mental care? Can we continue to allow people to verbally target our leaders, and suggest "second amendment remedies" when they disagree? Can we really afford to use expensive prisons in place of mental health care? I don't think so. And neither should you.

Friends of Justice Special Report: Governor Barbour Suspends Scott Sisters Sentences

Dr. Alan Bean of the Friends of Justice reports that Governor Hailey Barbour has suspended the sentences of Gladys and Jamie Scott.

As the announcement appears below indicates, this was a political compromise. According to the governor's announcement, "The Mississippi Parole Board reviewed the sisters' request for a pardon and recommended that I neither pardon them, nor commute their sentence." If no one in the wider world was paying attention, this would have been the end of the matter. But thanks to Nancy Lockhart, the civil rights community is well aware of this egregious case and, with Mr. Barbour already on the hot seat for his racial tin ear he had good reason to look for a third way.

Like the vast majority of defendants, the Scott sisters can't prove their innocence. The case against them was badly over-prosecuted, state witnesses have complained of harassment, and the trial was a travesty. But even if you think Gladys and Jamie done the deed, it is difficult to justify a five-year sentence in a case like this let alone double-life. What kind of jury would hand down sentences appropriate to an abduction-torture-rape-murder scenario for an alleged crime netting $11?

Well, if the comments section in Mississippi newspapers is anything to go by, there are a lot of folks in Mississippi who are quite prepared to take an eye-for-an-ear-lobe for any sort of crime if the defendants are presented as stereotypical thugs. The response of the Mississippi Parole Board is disappointing, to say the least. A recommendation of pardon or commutation would have amounted to an admission of judicial over-kill. A mere suspension creates the impression that the Scott Sisters deserved every year of their sentences but the good governor has a compassionate heart.

I doubt Gladys and Jamie are particularly concerned about the legal niceties--they just want to breathe in the free world again. And soon they will! That is good news indeed.

Dec. 29, 2010

GOV. BARBOUR’S STATEMENT REGARDING RELEASE OF SCOTT SISTERS

"Today, I have issued two orders indefinitely suspending the sentences of Jamie and Gladys Scott. In 1994, a Scott County jury convicted the sisters of armed robbery and imposed two life sentences for the crime. Their convictions and their sentences were affirmed by the Mississippi Court of Appeals in 1996.

"To date, the sisters have served 16 years of their sentences and are eligible for parole in 2014. Jamie Scott requires regular dialysis, and her sister has offered to donate one of her kidneys to her. The Mississippi Department of Corrections believes the sisters no longer pose a threat to society. Their incarceration is no longer necessary for public safety or rehabilitation, and Jamie Scott's medical condition creates a substantial cost to the State of Mississippi.

"The Mississippi Parole Board reviewed the sisters' request for a pardon and recommended that I neither pardon them, nor commute their sentence. At my request, the Parole Board subsequently reviewed whether the sisters should be granted an indefinite suspension of sentence, which is tantamount to parole, and have concurred with my decision to suspend their sentences indefinitely.

"Gladys Scott's release is conditioned on her donating one of her kidneys to her sister, a procedure which should be scheduled with urgency. The release date for Jamie and Gladys Scott is a matter for the Department of Corrections.

"I would like to thank Representative George Flaggs, Senator John Horne, Senator Willie Simmons, and Representative Credell Calhoun for their leadership on this issue. These legislators, along with former Mayor Charles Evers, have been in regular contact with me and my staff while the sisters' petition has been under review."

Link to Friends of Justice News Feed -- http://feeds.feedburner.com/FriendsOfJustice

Haley Barbour’s Yazoo City Also Home To Mississippi’s Most Prominent Lawyer, John Satterfield, Nationally Known Segregationist and Twice President of American Bar Association

John Satterfield Also Prominent in Citizens Councils Legal Wizardry

By Susan Klopfer

If Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has some explaining to do over Mississippi’s racist past, one of Barbour’s fellow Yazoo City Rotarians, John Satterfield, would also have the same problem – except that he’s dead, so maybe the American Bar Association could enlighten us.

The assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy left most civil rights activists grief-stricken. Kennedy had been the first president since Harry Truman to support equal rights for black Americans, even if he was not always successful. Some activists knew that Lyndon Baines Johnson, the president’s successor, had been one of only three Southern politicians who refused to sign the Southern Manifesto in protest of Brown and also orchestrated Eisenhower’s weak 1957 Civil Rights Act that helped kick-start the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

But could Johnson, a politician first and foremost, be trusted to work for civil rights instead of supporting his fellow white Southerners – men like Senator James O. Eastland of Sunflower County?

Apparently he could, and on November 27, 1963, President Johnson called for passage of the Civil Rights Bill as a monument to the late President Kennedy. Johnson and others knew this would not be an easy task, but few could have predicted the massive effort coming from Mississippi to undermine this legislation. By the fall of 1963, “Mississippi public funds” were already underwriting “the most active lobby [in Washington, D. C.] against civil rights legislation,” reported Ben A. Franklin in a special report to The New York Times. (It would be learned years later, the majority of funds actually emanated from a racist New York financier.)

Franklin correctly discovered money coming from (actually passing through) the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission to initiate activities of the Coordinating Committee for Fundamental American Freedoms, Inc. (CCFAF) at the Mississippi taxpayers’ expense. CCFAF was organized in July 1963, registering as a lobby to oppose the Administration’s Civil Rights Bill and “all similar legislation.” In all, over $300,000 would be collected and spent on this legislation and related Mississippi segregationist projects, according to the New York Times reporter. Sovereignty Commission files, opened to the public years later, revealed the original major source of these funds, Wickliffe Draper.

It was an intriguing group that came together to battle the civil rights legislation: Chairing CCFAF was William Loeb, the controversial and conservative editor and publisher of the Mancheser (N.H.) Union Leader and other newspapers. James J. Kilpatrick, editor of the Richmond News Ledger was Vice Chair while secretary-treasurer and most active top officer was John Satterfield of Yazoo City, a close adviser to Governor Ross Barnett and president of both the Mississippi and American Bar Associations (in 1961 and 1962), positions he used in fighting the Civil Rights Bill.

Satterfield was clearly the conservative’s conservative -- once charging the U.S. Supreme Court with “eroding state’s rights and threatening the country’s liberty and security” by giving “inordinate weight” to the rights of individuals. By the end of the 1960s,Time magazine would label this Yazoo City lawyer as "the most prominent segregationist lawyer in the country.”

A year before the Washington, D. C. effort, Satterfield served as a special adviser to Governor Ross Barnet during James Meredith’s successful integration of the University of Mississippi, and wrote a report to the Mississippi legislature blasting Kennedy and the federal government’s intervention.

Like any power broker, Satterfield had his enemies, including Rev. Ed King of Jackson, a well-known Tougaloo College chaplain and civil rights activist. King had helped coordinate the Jackson lunch counter protests with his ally, sociologist John R. Salter. In a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Methodist Conference rally a year following the murder of NAACP state leader Medgar Evers, King appeared in front of the session to brand Satterfield as “the chief [functionary] of the Nazi operation that operates the state of Mississippi.” Satterfield was attending as leader of the lay delegation of the Mississippi Methodist Conference and King reported on Satterfield’s “$20,000 a year to lobby against civil rights legislation in Washington.”

Despite its detractors, Mississippi’s fight over civil rights legislation, albeit short-lived, was an upscale operation under Satterfield’s direction, with an office suite serving as CCFAF headquarters at the Carrol Arms Hotel, a Capitol Hill landmark overlooking the Senate office buildings.

John Satterfield, born July 25, 1904 in Port Gibson, Mississippi, the son of a Claiborne County attorney, began working part-time in his father's office at the age of ten. Admitted to the Mississippi bar in 1929, Satterfield joined the practice of Alexander & Alexander in Jackson. That same year, the twenty-year-old was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives where he remained until 1932.

In 1969, Time described Satterfield as "the most prominent segregationist lawyer in the country." Satterfield drafted legislation for the Citizens' Councils and acted as counsel to the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, the Coordinating Committee for Fundamental American Freedoms. In 1969-70, Satterfield served as special counsel for a number of public school districts across Mississippi and the South seeking to delay desegregation, a consolidated case that reached as high as the Supreme Court.

Satterfield was president of the Mississippi State Bar in 1954-55, and was an active member of the American Bar Association, serving on numerous committees over the years including: Rules & Calendar, Jurisprudence & Law Reform, Resolutions, Individual Rights as Affected by National Security, Continuing Legal Education, Awards to Media of Public Information, Economics of Law Practice (chair). He served on the organization's Board of Governors from 1955 through 1958 and represented Mississippi in the House of Delegates for twelve years. In August 1960, he became president-elect of the American Bar Association and held the presidential office from 1961 through 1962.

Satterfield was also a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, served as director of the American Judicature Society, and also belonged to the American Law Institute, the International Bar Association, the Federal Bar Association, the American College of Probate Counsel, the Mississippi Defense Lawyers Association, the International Association of Insurance Counsel. Satterfield was a member the Masons, the Rotary Club of Yazoo City, and the Kiwanis Club of Jackson. He attended both Galloway Memorial Church in Jackson and First Methodist Church in Yazoo City, serving on various local and district boards.

Satterfield died on 5 May 1981 reportedly from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
***

Some resources uses for this article

"Satterfield, ex-ABA chief, dies at 76" Jackson Clarion-Ledger (7 May 1981): 10B.

William H. Tucker, The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), pp. 64-94.

Finding-Aid for the John C. Satterfield/American Bar Association Collection (MUM00685), Archives and Special Collections, The University of Mississippi Library

Parts Excerpted from Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited (Klopfer, 2005)

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.

Continued --







 

Status of Black US Males in "Crisis" New York Report States

(Buffalo News) The Council of Great City Schools today released a stark report detailing the status of young black males in the United States.

“The nation’s young black males are in a state of crisis,” the authors write. “This report is likely to make people angry, and it should. We hope that this is a louder and more jolting wake-up call to the nation than this country is used to hearing.”

Some of the key facts they cite:

- Black males are twice as likely to drop out of high school as white males.

- Ten percent of black males have a bachelor’s degree, compared to 18 percent of white males.

- White males who did not graduate from high school earn $5,000 a year more than black males who dropped out. White males with a master’s degree earned $20,000 more than black men with a master’s degree.

Here's more --

http://www.cgcs.org/publications/Call_For_Change.pdf

Color of Change Org. Asks People to Help Black Farmers Get Due Settlement From U.S.D.A.

http://www.colorofchange.org/pigford/?id=2413-900765

For more information, contact: ColorofChange.org

Please Cut, Paste and Send the following:

Dear friends,

For years, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) denied Black farmers loans and other aid easily approved for White farmers. Many Black farming families lost their land and livelihoods as a result. The farmers sued the government for damages and won -- but only a fraction of them ever got paid.[1]

As a Senator, Barack Obama helped to secure a new settlement for the remaining Black farmers, but Senate Republicans have repeatedly blocked funding for it. A growing chorus of voices, including the Congressional Black Caucus, has called on the White House to directly address this injustice and pay these farmers what they're owed out of administrative funds -- but so far it hasn't.[2]

I've joined ColorOfChange.org in calling on President Obama to do right by these farmers. Will you join us? It takes just a moment:

http://www.colorofchange.org/pigford/?id=2413-900765

For more than a generation, managers at the United States Department of Agriculture systematically turned down Black farmers' applications for loans and other critical forms of aid. These loans are the lifeblood of farming, and without them many Black-owned farms were foreclosed on -- and resold to White farmers.

This insidious discrimination enabled some White farmers to prosper and grow at the expense of generations of Black families who sought to make a living off the land. At the same time, it devastated the Black farming community. While 14% of all farmers were Black at the turn of the last century,[3] by 2002 only 1.4% were Black.[4]

Black farmers eventually filed a class action lawsuit against the federal government, winning a landmark legal settlement in 1999. At the time, the USDA paid only a portion of the farmers with legitimate claims, so a second settlement was announced -- but Congress never approved funding to pay the remaining farmers.[5]

Republican obstruction has been the main stumbling block on the Black farmers' long road to justice. Senate Republicans have repeatedly stood in the way of funding the settlement. First they demanded that the money to pay the farmers not add to the national budget deficit.[6] Even after that requirement was satisfied, they once again blocked a vote on the appropriation.[7]

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus are rightfully furious at the Republicans' stalling, and have called on President Obama to bypass the legislative process by paying the settlement out of administrative funds.[8] The White House has maintained that it doesn't have the money to pay the $1.25 million settlement -- but at the same time, the administration promised to find $1.5 billion to pay disaster relief for wealthier, mostly White farmers in Arkansas.[9]

With Congress becoming even more conservative after November's election, it is even less likely that funding for the Black farmers' discrimination settlement will be funded in next year's Congress. It needs to happen now.

The White House has worked hard to pass the funding through Congress, but now they need to show Congressional Republicans that they mean business. As the CBC pointed out, justice delayed is justice denied for these aging men and women. Every day, another farm is foreclosed on and more farmers die without having been compensated for the shattering discrimination they faced. Please join me and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org community in supporting the CBC's call for President Obama to fund the Black farmers' settlement. And when you do, please ask your friends and family to do the same:

http://www.colorofchange.org/pigford/?id=2413-900765

Thanks.

References

1. http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=433
2. http://bit.ly/aVTiI4
3. http://tinyurl.com/cxohg2
4. http://wikileaks.org/wiki/CRS-RS20430
5. http://wikileaks.org/wiki/CRS-RS20430
6. http://bit.ly/aheAdR
7. http://bit.ly/98ZtDD
8. http://bit.ly/aVTiI4