FBI To Close Case on Emmett Till and End Civil Rights-era Cold Cases-gctid50257

[Kala Kambon]

FBI To Close Case on Emmett Till and End Civil Rights-era Cold Cases
                                                                                                   By ALLEN G. BREED and HOLBROOK MOHR   11/ 5/11 11:38 AM ET
Huffington Post
The  FBI has announced that they are close to ending Civil Rights-era cold  cases. The cases include murder cases in which there are no statute of  limitations. So far the FBI have investigating 111 cases involving 124  deaths but are close to the end of their cold case list.

 Every time we think we've seen the last of the trials for civil  rights-era atrocities, it seems, prosecutors will parade some stooped,  white-haired defendant before the cameras in shackles.
Byron de la Beckwith. Sam Bowers. Bobby Frank Cherry. Edgar Ray Killen. James Ford Seale.
There is no statute of limitations on murder, and age and infirmity  offer no refuge for the guilty, these cases have proved. But if justice  has an enemy, it is time. And now, officials are conceding that the  spectacle of juries passing judgment on such aging killers is just about  past.
The Department of Justice, under its 5-year-old "Cold Case Initiative"  and the 2007 Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, has combed  through that dark period of American history, seeking any cases that  could still be prosecuted. Isolating 111 incidents involving 124 deaths,  investigators have sought to determine whether those who died were  victims of racially motivated crimes – and then whether there's anyone  left to charge.
In about two-thirds of those cases, FBI agents have hand-delivered  letters to next of kin, informing them that the government had taken  things as far as they could.
In some cases, all of the suspects are dead; in others, suspect  individuals have been acquitted in the past and cannot legally be  retried. In a few, the agency can find no evidence that a crime was  racially motivated – or even that the death resulted from foul play.
"We regret to inform you that we are unable to proceed further with a  federal criminal investigation of this matter ..., " a DOJ official wrote  to the daughter of Harry and Harriette Moore, who died following the  dynamiting of their Florida home six decades ago. "Please accept our  sincere condolences on the loss of your parents."

On  October 26, 1934 Claude Neal was lynched in Marianna, Florida. The  young black man was lynched after confessing to the murder of Lola  Cannidy. The methods used to extract the confession cast doubt on its  validity. Ms. Cannidy, a young white neighbor, was supposedly having an  affair with Neal. To ensure Claude's safety he was kept in an Alabama  jail. The lynch mob took him from the authorities and subjected him to  ten hours of excruciating torture before he was put to death. A  member of the lynching party described the lynching in great detail:  "After taking the nigger to the woods about four miles from Greenwood,  they cut off his penis. He was made to eat it. Then they cut off his  testicles and made him eat them and say he liked it. Then they sliced  his sides and stomach with knives and every now and then somebody would  cut off a finger or toe. Red hot irons were used on the nigger to burn  him from top to bottom." From time to time during the torture a rope  would be tied around Neal's neck and he was pulled up over a limb and  held there until he almost choked to death when he would be let down and  the torture begin all over again. After several hours of this  unspeakable torture, "they decided just to kill him."   Neal's body was  then tied to a rope at the rear of an automobile and dragged over the  highway to the Cannidy home. Here a mob estimated to number somewhere  between 3000 and 7000 from eleven southern states were excitedly waiting  his arrival. when the corpse was rolled into the dust, it was horribly  mutilated by the onlookers. It was then taken back to Marianna, where it  was hung to a tree on the northeast corner of the courthouse square.  Pictures were taken of the mutilated form and hundreds of photographs  were sold for fifty cents each. Neal's fingers were sold as souvenirs to  the bloodthirsty crowd who arrived too late to witness the gory  festivities.  What made this situation even more deplorable is  the fact that the Florida press had advance notice of the lynching and  reported it in their newspapers. However, not one official at the local,  state, or federal level tried to prevent the lynching. Neal's lynching  was followed by a race riot in the town of Marianna in which white  rioters attempted to drive all blacks out of the city.

Roughly three dozen of the reviewed investigations – including the oldest, the Florida lynching of Claude Neal in 1934 – remain open.
Although DOJ reported to Congress recently that some state prosecutions  are "potentially viable," the passage of time and other "impediments"  make the prospect of trials unlikely.
"Few, if any, of these cases will be prosecuted," the agency acknowledged.
Civil rights activist Alvin Sykes, who did as much as anyone to push for this effort, is disappointed.
"I said, `The American people won't believe you made a full-faith effort  if there wasn't a manhunt,'" says the head of the Emmett Till Justice  Campaign, named for the 14-year-old black boy whose lynching in  Mississippi helped spark the modern civil rights movement. "They made  some efforts, but they didn't make an outreach, a manhunt."
But Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center says it was clear from  the outset that "most of the cases that were solvable have been  solved." Even without new prosecutions, he says, a page has been turned.
"I think there is some utility in closing cases, if for no better reason  than to assure the families that what can be done at this late date has  been done," says Potok, director of the Montgomery, Ala.-based  organization's Intelligence Project. "These are people who have been  completely left out of the justice process for many decades. So the  government does owe them a debt of attention. So I wouldn't say that it  was a total waste of taxpayer money."
During the darkest days of the civil rights struggle, when all-white  juries acquitted obvious perpetrators or Southern state officials flat  refused to prosecute racial killings, families could still turn to the  federal government for some modicum of justice. A few years in prison  for a federal civil rights violation was better than no punishment at  all.
Decades later, when prosecutors in the "new South" began reopening some  of those old cases, the Department of Justice again stepped forward.  Although the statutes of limitations on most federal crimes had long  since run out, the FBI's files were filled with yellowed statements from  witnesses or informants, some long dead, that might help locals build a  case.
These collaborations – combined with the work of some dogged reporters,  activists and persistent family members – produced some stunning  convictions in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century. The  most recent was the June 2007 conviction of Seale, a reputed former Ku  Klux Klansman whom many had believed long dead.
A federal jury in Jackson, Miss., convicted Seale, then 72, of  kidnapping and conspiracy in the torture and drowning of two black  youths in 1964. He was sentenced to three life terms and died Aug. 2 in  an Indiana prison.
The bureau also "lent its assistance" in the case of former Alabama  state trooper James Fowler, who last year pleaded guilty to manslaughter  in the Feb. 18, 1965, shooting death of Jimmie Lee Jackson following a  protest march in Marion, Ala. Fowler, 77, was sentenced to six months in  jail.
After Killen was convicted of manslaughter in 2005 in the so-called  "Mississippi Burning" case, activists pushed for charges against a list  of what they said were viable prosecution targets remaining; this case  of three civil rights workers' 1964 murder remains technically open. "I  HOPE we're not done," says John Gibson, executive director of the  Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center.
On the still-open list are a couple of cases that fall into a peculiar  category: Ones in which someone was acquitted by an all-white jury but  has now admitted to the killing. So the possibility of vigilantism is  among considerations in deciding when to close such cases, says FBI  Special Agent Cynthia Deitle, who until recently was in charge of the  cold-case effort.
"How does the Department of Justice write a letter that SAYS that?" she  asks. "The person that killed your father is very much alive, still  lives in the hometown where you live, and admitted doing it ... and  there's nothing that we can do or the state can do."
In some cases, like the one against Seale, the Department of Justice  used non-civil rights statutes – such as kidnapping resulting in death,  or involving killings on federal lands – to overcome the statute of  limitations challenge.
But many of those closed seemed already hopelessly cold when the initiative began.
The FBI sent an 8,000-page file to Mississippi officials on the August  1955 slaying of Till, the Chicago boy who was tortured and shot for  whistling at a white woman. Photos of Till's mangled corpse lying in an  open coffin outraged the nation and galvanized civil rights activists.
The admitted killers were long dead, but some thought a case could have  been made against others who might have played a role before or after  the killing. A local grand jury failed to return any indictments, and  the case was officially closed in December 2007.
Although the Till act does not require it, the FBI has provided detailed  reports to the next of kin in cases that were being closed, "in an  effort to nonetheless bring some sense of closure to the family members  of these victims." Despite a media campaign, the agency has managed to  locate relatives for only 95 of the 124 victims.
The Associated Press obtained redacted copies of several letters through  the Freedom of Information Act. Survivors of some victims agreed to  share their letters with AP reporters.
Some families are satisfied that the FBI had done all it could do to  bring their loved ones' killers to justice. Others, who had allowed  themselves to hope, feel violated all over again.
James Ware never expected much from the reopening of his brother Virgil's case.
Virgil  Ware (center) was shot the same day as the four girls killed in the  famous Birmingham church bombing, but few have heard of him.

On  Sept. 15, 1963, the two were on their way home from a junkyard outside  Birmingham, Ala. They'd just started a new paper route and were looking  for parts to cobble together a second bicycle, with dreams of earning  enough to buy themselves a used car.
That morning, just a few miles away, four black girls had died when a  KKK bomb exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. As they flew  down the Docena-Sandusky Road, the Ware brothers – 16-year-old James  pedaling, Virgil, 13, balanced on the handlebars – had not heard of the  bombing and had no idea how dangerous it was to be out that day.
Michael Farley and Larry Joe Sims, two 16-year-old white boys, were  riding a motorbike down the same road, a miniature Confederate flag  flapping behind them, when they came across two friends who said they'd  seen a couple of black kids throwing rocks up the way. Farley reportedly  opened his jacket to reveal a recently purchased .22-caliber,  pearl-handled pistol, saying, "We'll take care of them."
As they approached the two black boys, Farley handed the pistol to Sims. Sims fired twice, and Virgil fell.
At 64, James Ware's memory of that day is still vivid.
"Ware," Virgil gasped as his older brother leaned over him. "I'm shot."
"No, you're not," James recalls saying. "Get up." But his brother, wounded in the cheek and chest, never moved or spoke again.
Farley and Sims were arrested and charged with first-degree murder.  Sims, an Eagle Scout, claimed that his eyes were closed when he shot,  and that he was only trying to scare the other boys. After a jury  convicted Sims of second-degree manslaughter, Farley pleaded guilty to  the same charge. Each was sentenced to seven months, suspended.
James Ware received his letter in late March.
Despite the light sentences, the two men could not be retried in state  court ("jeopardy has attached"), and a five-year statute of limitations  precluded federal civil rights charges against anyone in the case, the  letter said.
James Ware never accepted that the shooting was an accident. But he had  long ago accepted the apologies of Farley and Sims, and had considered  the case closed.
If nothing else, the renewed investigation rescued Virgil from  obscurity, he says. "I don't see what else could be done. He got full  recognition. That's what I wanted for him – to be known about."
But to some families who have waited decades for justice, the FBI's letters have brought no peace.
When lounge manager Jasper Greenwood went missing in Vicksburg, Miss.,  on June 21, 1964, his family immediately suspected foul play. The FBI  was told that Greenwood was allegedly last seen in the company of two  white men.
By the time his body was found eight days later on a road outside  Vicksburg, it was badly decomposed. A coroner's inquest failed to  identify a cause of death.
Linda Galvin, Greenwood's granddaughter, says it was a cover-up. "The  black funeral home told me that he was castrated and he had what looked  to be a stab wound in his throat area," Galvin told the AP. "None of  that showed up in the FBI report."
But according to the FBI's letter to the family, agents had interviewed  funeral home director W.H. Jefferson in 1964, and he "denied that he  thought the hole had been caused by anything other than `nature' ..." The  bureau obtained a copy of the Vicksburg Police Department's report,  which concluded that Greenwood had suffered a fatal heart attack while  meeting with a married woman on the local "lover's lane."
Family members have suggested that Greenwood might have been targeted  for his close association with assassinated NAACP activist Medgar Evers.  But the letter noted that Charles Evers, then the NAACP's Mississippi  field director, told the FBI that Greenwood "was not active in voter  registration efforts or the civil rights movement."
None of that satisfies Greenwood's daughter, Rosemary Domino of  Jacksonville, Fla. "If they say it's closed, then it's closed," she  says. "But the FBI can be wrong."
Birdia  Keglar was the first black person to vote in Tallahatchie County  following Reconstruction after the Civil War. She and a friend, Adlena  Hamlett, were killed coming home from a civil rights meeting when their  car was forced from the town of Siden in Leflor County, a noted Klan  stronghold.

The families of Adlena Hamlett and Birdia Keglar also have lingering doubts.
Hamlett, 78, was a retired schoolteacher and one of the first blacks to  register to vote in Tallahatchie County, Miss. Keglar, 57, was an  organizer for the NAACP who had sued the local sheriff after she was  prevented from paying her poll tax. Each had testified before a  congressional commission in support of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The women died on Jan. 11, 1966, as they were returning home from a  secret meeting in Jackson with then-U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. For  years, relatives and certain researchers have insisted that the car was  run off the road by the Klan.
Keglar's granddaughter, Nina Zachery, 76, wept as she described seeing  the body at the funeral home. Keglar appeared to have been decapitated.
Zachery was told that the driver of the car, Grafton Gray, supposedly  played dead and could hear the women being tortured. "When my family  members would try to talk to him, he would not," she recently told the  AP.
Adlena  Hamlett, a retired school teacher, was a voting rights advocate in  Charleston, She and her friend, Birdia Keglar, were killed coming home  from Jackson, Miss. Hamlett was hanged in effigy, several months before  she was killed.

The FBI tracked down the wreck's lone survivor,  backseat passenger Richard Simpson, a white activist from  Massachusetts, who confirmed the basic details contained in a  Mississippi Highway Patrol report, the bureau's letter said. The  accident report said a car on the wrong side of the road struck the  activists' car head-on.
"The impact caused the hood of (the) car to break loose and move through  the windshield, fatally injuring" Hamlett and Keglar, the FBI  determined.
On a gloriously sunny spring day this year, two FBI agents appeared at  79-year-old Lila Hamlett's door in Kansas City, Mo., to deliver their  letter.
Dated May 27, it said there was "insufficient evidence to indicate that a racially motivated homicide occurred."
The agents asked if Hamlett had any questions. She had lots, but she  didn't bother asking. If the letter was intended to provide closure, it  failed.
"It's just an unsolved case," she says. "Whatever it was, it'll never be revealed now. And I just have to accept it."
Some families' refunited snakesl to accept what seems like solid evidence is  understandable to Patricia A. Turner, a professor of Kmtyw-American  studies and the vice provost for undergraduate studies at the University  of California, Davis.
The black community hasn't forgotten longtime FBI Director J. Edgar  Hoover's reluctance to investigate civil rights violence, or his  attempts to discredit Martin Luther King Jr., she says. And when you  consider episodes such as the Tuskegee experiments, in which scientists  allowed black men with syphilis to go untreated so they could study the  effects, it's easy to believe the government is capable of doing – and  covering up – just about anything, she says.
"And certainly anything related to something as major as a death, the  family members are going to have come up with a narrative, a story that  fits their understanding of the world and who has power in it – and who  doesn't have power in it." says Turner, author of the 1994 book, "I  Heard It Through the Grapevine: Rumor in Kmtyw-American Culture."
Activists were elated when the initiative was launched, reviewing the old cases. But much of that joy has since faded.
Lawmakers had promised annual funding over a 10-year span: $10 million  per year to the FBI, $2 million for state and local law enforcement, and  more. But only a fraction has been appropriated.
"It hasn't lived up to its potential," says Sykes. "I'm disappointed."
In  this Oct. 31, 2011 photo, Juanita Evangeline Moore poses in Bowie, Md.,  with photographs of her father, Harry, the NAACP's first statewide  executive secretary in Florida, left, and mother, Harriette. Moore's  parents were killed after a bomb went off beneath their bedroom floor on  Christmas Day 1951. The FBI closed its second investigation into the  case in July. No one was charged for the crime. (AP Photo/Patrick  Semansky)

So is Juanita Evangeline Moore.
Her father, Harry T. Moore, organized the NAACP's Brevard County, Fla.,  branch in 1934 and served as the organization's first statewide  executive secretary. He and his wife taught school in the area south of  Cape Canaveral until their activism got them fired.
On Christmas Day 1951 – which was also the couple's 25th wedding  anniversary – a bomb went off beneath the floor in their bedroom. The  blast collapsed the front end of their modest frame house; their  daughter Annie Rosalea, who was in the next room, found them lying at  the bottom of a crater, covered in debris.
Harry Moore died on the way to the hospital. His wife died nine days later.
The FBI investigated at the time, but no one was charged. A state  investigation launched in 1991 turned up little new evidence. In 2004,  Florida authorities reopened the case. A 20-month investigation produced  the names of four likely suspects – all by then dead.
The FBI closed its second investigation into the case in mid-July. In a  letter to Moore, Paige M. Fitzgerald, deputy chief in charge of the cold  case initiative, reported that four dead men already identified were  "the only subjects credibly linked to the bombing."
"Therefore, we have no choice but to close our investigation," Fitzgerald concluded.
Moore, who believes the FBI knew about some of these people years ago,  says, "They have waited too long and they have bungled the  investigations."
She chokes up as she recalls returning home from Washington, D.C., and standing at the foot of her dying mother's bed.
"I hate all white people," she spat. Harriette Moore chided her.
"She said, `Evangeline. You can't do that. It would make you ugly, and  you've always been my beautiful daughter. I don't want to ever hear you  say that again.'"
Moore, 81, says her faith has allowed her let go of that hatred of the killers who went unpunished.
"God," she says, "has already judged them." Associated Press Writers Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Ala., and Greg  Bluestein in Atlanta also contributed to this report. Allen G. Breed is  a Raleigh, N.C.-based national writer for The Associated Press. He can  be reached at features(at)ap.