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| Edwards,JoeEd July 12, 1964; Ferriday, Louisiana 25 years | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 10 2008, 01:12 PM (4,043 Views) | |
| monkalup | Jul 10 2008, 01:12 PM Post #1 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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http://www.theconcordiasentinel.com/news.php?id=2123![]() Shamrock clerk's statement to FBI on Morris murder, Edwards disappearance by Stanley Nelson - posted Thursday, July 10th, 2008 @ 8:21 am E-mail This Story | Print This Story WAS JOE-ED EDWARDS KIDNAPPED AT SHAMROCK MOTEL, TAKEN TO MISSISSIPPI, SHOT 30-PLUS TIMES, BODY DUMPED IN RIVER? In September 1967, a former clerk at the Shamrock Motel in Vidalia gave FBI agents new information concerning both Frank Morris and Joe "JoeEd" Edwards. While working at the Shamrock in 1964, the woman said an elderly black man told her not to rent the room next to the motel office "until all the other rooms were filled. He explained that the room had a bad spot on the rug and was unsightly." Two days before she quit her job, she noticed that the storage room adjacent to the registration office "had removable shelves which permitted entrance into" the very room she was told had a "soiled rug." She also recalled "suspicious activities at the motel," one involving a black male kitchen employee, who often wore a long apron. She observed this man, who fit the description of JoeEd Edwards, when he cut the grass at a cottage across the street. That cottage may have been one of several located at Maple Courts, which included small bungalows. Each included one bedroom, a small kitchen and a living area. Those cottages have since been destroyed. One cottage had "shapely cedar trees in front" and drew the attention of the former Shamrock clerk. On one occasion, the woman observed a white female leave the restaurant and enter this cottage. Shortly afterward, the black male kitchen employee entered the same cottage and stayed a long time. The woman said she observed this more than once. After she quit her job, the former clerk said she was visited by a Mississippi state trooper who stopped by her residence in Natchez. She said the trooper told her that "the black man" at the Shamrock "had been killed and thrown in the river." This information on the Shamrock porter is contained in redacted FBI documents on the investigation into the murder of Frank Morris, who died as the result of the arson of his shoe shop in Ferriday in December 1964. Also noted in this same report is more information by the former female employee at the Shamrock. She said about two months after Morris was killed, she observed a man at the Crossroads Store at 275 Lower Woodville Road near the International Paper Company plant in Natchez. The man was drunk, she said. The woman heard the intoxicated man say of the Ferriday shoe shop owner: "I hated to burn the son of b****h up, but I had to do it." Before he died, Morris told the FBI that he was in his bed in the back of his shop, heard glass breaking and was confronted at the front of the store by one man holding a single-barrel shotgun and another spreading flammable liquid. The man holding a five-gallon fuel can ignited the liquid with a match and seconds later Morris emerged from the back of the shop in flames. Six months earlier in July, JoeEd Edwards, the Shamrock porter, disappeared. His car was found a few days later near Ferriday. Edwards' sister, Julia B. Dobbins, was 18-years-old in 1964 when her 25-year-old brother was reported missing. Now living in Bridge City on the west bank near New Orleans, Dobbins was in Natchez this past weekend to celebrate the Fourth of July holiday with family. She married her husband, Charles Dobbins, in 1964 and the couple left Natchez in early 1965. Julia recently retired from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department, where she worked under the legendary sheriff, Harry Lee. Julia Dobbins said the last time she saw her brother was on Independence Day 44 years ago -- July 4, 1964. JoeEd brought his sister and other family members to the home of their grandparents, Jake and Mary King. The couple lived on Hwy. 900 in Concordia Parish between Clayton and the Lake St. John road. JoeEd and another brother lived with the Kings, while Julia lived with their mother, Bernice Conner, at 52 East Oak Street in Natchez. Their mother was 42-years-old at the time. "Mama died in 1990," said Julia. "She grieved herself to death over Joe. He always popped in every two or three days and when he didn't show up we started calling around. No one had seen him. We kept thinking he would show." Instead, a few days after his July 12th disappearance, his family learned that his car had been found in the curve of the road behind the bowling alley on the Ferriday-Vidalia Hwy. Julia recalls going with her mother to Ferriday to see JoeEd's car which was towed to the Gulf Oil Station. JoeEd's cousin, Carl Ray Thompson, an alderman in Clayton, said a necktie arranged in the form of a noose was found on the steering wheel of the car, a two-tone blue and beige 1958 Buick. Julia said there was a belt in the car which didn't belong to JoeEd. Bloodstains were also found in the car. The Rev. Robert Lee Jr., 94, of Clayton, knew JoeEd as he was growing up. "I drove the school bus that JoeEd rode," said Lee. "He had asked me to marry him and his girlfriend. After he went missing, we just thought he got cold feet." Lee's son, Robert Lee III, said JoeEd's friends knew that he was seeing a white woman at the Shamrock at the same time he was engaged to his black girlfriend, Olga Reed "Augeree" Taylor. "He told us about it and we warned him that he was taking his life into his own hands," said Lee III. "We knew the Klan wouldn't like that." The Lees recalled that the FBI came to visit JoeEd's grandparents, the Kings, and reported they had found the head of a black male and asked if they had any of JoeEd's dental records, which they did not. "The Kings had been told by deputies not to talk to the FBI," said Lee III. Billy Bob Williams, a retired FBI agent living in Portland, OR, was an agent in residence in Natchez for 18 months. He had just arrived in town in July 1964 when JoeEd's mother, Bernice Conner, came to the FBI office. "She was distraught and said the Klan had got her boy," said Williams. Because JoeEd went missing in Louisiana, FBI agents in Natchez didn't have jurisdiction in the case because they operated under the jurisdiction of the Jackson office. Williams notified FBI agents working out the New Orleans' division office and the Monroe field office. Rev. Lee was told by people he considered reliable that JoeEd was taken into Mississippi, shot 30-plus times and his body put into concrete and thrown in the river. Two other sources, who requested anonymity, were told the same story. One source was told by a high-ranking parish official that JoeEd was "escorted out of the parish." All were told that some deputies as well as the Ku Klux Klan were involved in Edwards' disappearance. For Julia Dobbins, not knowing what happened to JoeEd has been a lifelong source of anguish. She described her brother as a snappy dresser, full of life, fun-loving and always on the move. "He liked the ladies," she said. "He had a lot of clothes, he liked to shoot pool and he liked to gamble, especially with dice. We use to call him 'Joe Smooth.'" He held three jobs to pay his bills, said Julia. "He worked at the Albert Pick motel in Natchez, at the Swift meat packing house and at the Shamrock," she said. "We had 11 brothers and sisters and Joe was the fourth oldest. Seven of us are still alive. Joe was my favorite brother. He always paid attention to me." Their mother, Bernice Conner, thought of JoeEd every day after he went missing, said Julia. "She grieved over him," said Julia. "I think the FBI may have come to our house twice. But they never told us anything. We don't know any more now than we did then." Julia recalled that in the days and months after JoeEd went missing their mother would ask everyone she saw, "Have you seen Joe?" When the phone would ring, their mother would say, "Oh, maybe that's Joe." She recalls her brother had a "big heart and was just a good person. He wouldn't hurt anybody. We just want to know what happened to him." |
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| monkalup | Jul 10 2008, 01:19 PM Post #2 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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Contact Agency( name , phone #, fax #) Case # Name: Joe "JoeEd" Edwards AKA: "JoeEd" Sex: Male Race: Black Age when missing: 25 Date Missing: July 12 1964 Birth Date: Hair Color: Eye Color: Height: Weight: Tattoos: Piercings: Scars: Burn scars, unspecified locations Previous fractures or broken bones: Dentals: Clothes last seen wearing: Jewelry: Location last seen ( city, town, county) Circumstances: a few days after his July 12th disappearance, his family learned that his car had been found in the curve of the road behind the bowling alley on the Ferriday-Vidalia Hwy. JoeEd's cousin, Carl Ray Thompson, an alderman in Clayton, said a necktie arranged in the form of a noose was found on the steering wheel of the car, a two-tone blue and beige 1958 Buick. Julia said there was a belt in the car which didn't belong to JoeEd. Bloodstains were also found in the car. Vehicle last seen in if any: two-tone blue and beige 1958 Buick (later recovered) Work or Hobbies: He liked the ladies," she said. "He had a lot of clothes, he liked to shoot pool and he liked to gamble, especially with dice. We use to call him 'Joe Smooth.'" He held three jobs to pay his bills, said Julia. Are Dentals, DNA or Fingerprints available( specify) Additional comments: Julia Dobbins said the last time she saw her brother was on Independence Day 44 years ago -- July 4, 1964. JoeEd brought his sister and other family members to the home of their grandparents, Jake and Mary King. The couple lived on Hwy. 900 in Concordia Parish between Clayton and the Lake St. John road. Source: http://www.theconcordiasentinel.com/news.php?id=2123 |
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| monkalup | Jul 10 2008, 01:21 PM Post #3 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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Gunshots in Morgantown signaled changes in Klan membership by Stanley Nelson - posted Thursday, January 10th, 2008 @ 8:37 am E-mail This Story | Print This Story In June 1964 residents of the Morgantown community in Natchez were awakened by the sound of gunfire. The shooter was a 33-year-old Mississippi Klansman upset that local members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan weren't paying their dues. That and other problems were causing dissension in the ranks. This Klansman, employed as a bleach washman at International Paper Company, mulled over the matter during the hot June night and got drunk in the process. He decided he would start a local feud among Klansmen. At 3 a.m. he parked his car at Klan headquarters in Morgantown, pulled out his .44 pistol and began to fire. According to testimony provided to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) in the mid-1960s, this Klansmen "shot the lock" off the door "and sprayed numerous bullets throughout the headquarters." A witness said this Klansman was furious that "some of the members of the Mississippi Klan left this Klavern and joined the United KKK...." Seven months before Ferriday shoe shop owner Frank Morris was murdered, the Ku Klux Klan in this region was undergoing great change, as that summer night in Morgantown 43 years ago exemplifies. Allegiances were changing. Some Klansmen said all of the Klans were becoming too violent. But others said a Klan organization had yet to exist which would satisfy the level of violence they sought. Despite these changes in Klan structure in 1964, the Klans in Concordia and the Mississippi counties of Adams, Franklin, Lincoln and Pike would continue the killings, the arsons and the bombings. Their handiwork stretched eastward along Hwy. 84 from Ferriday to Natchez. From there, the path of violence followed U.S. 84/98 through Fenwick, Cranfield, Roxie, Bunkley, Meadville and Bude. At that point, the highways split off with U.S. 84 leading to Brookhaven and onward to Laurel and U.S. 98 to McComb and onward to Hattiesburg. HUAC discovered that by February 1966 there were 15 independent Klans operating in the United States. From 1964 to 1966, there were a total of 714 klaverns (local units of a Klan) with a membership estimated at 16,810. North Carolina even had ladies auxiliaries. There were three Klan organizations predominant in this region -- Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Louisiana; White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; and United Klans of America. • ORIGINAL KNIGHTS OF THE KU KLUX KLAN, LOUISIANA Concordia was primarily connected with the Original Knights, but some of the Klan leaders in the parish, well-connected with the Klans in Adams and Franklin counties, were involved in the militant White Knights. The Original Knights were active from 1964 to 1966 but split into factions in the fall of 1964, as did many other Klan groups. The natural connections for these Klans were the three mills in Natchez -- International Paper Company, Johns-Manville and Armstrong Tire & Rubber Company. There, Klansmen could communicate every day, three shifts a day, during coffee and lunch breaks. The Original Knights, an old organization reactivated in 1960 in Bossier City and Monroe, dominated the Louisiana Klan scene until 1965. Klaverns were set up throughout the state with, according to HUAC, "the heaviest concentration in the areas of Shreveport, Monroe and the Sixth Congressional District in Bogalusa." In Concordia, there were two klaverns in the parish associated with the Original Knights -- one in Vidalia, known as the Vidalia (or Concordia) Sportsman's Club, and one in Morville at Deer Park, where a few years after the congressional report was issued the owners and associates of a whore house at Morville were indicted, and some convicted, in state and federal court. Statewide, the Original Knights were involved in 29 parishes, 19 of which were in northeastern and central Louisiana. There were 46 klaverns statewide. Klans sometimes used fronts so they could open bank accounts and hide their identities. The names of sportsman clubs in Louisiana and rescue units in Mississippi were common fronts. Original Knights klaverns in this region of the state included Concordia (2 klaverns): Morville at Deer Park; Vidalia (or Concordia) Sportsman Club. Catahoula (1 klavern): Catahoula Sportsman Club. Franklin (1 klavern): Winnsboro. LaSalle (1 klavern): Jena Hunting & Fishing Club. Madison (1 klavern): Delta, Delta Sportsman Club. Ouachita (4 klaverns): Monroe, Northeast Gun Club; Monroe, Okaloosa Hunting & Fishing Club; Sterlington, Sterlington Hunting & Fishing Club; Swartz, Swartz Hunting & Fishing Club: Rapides (3 klaverns): Alexandria; Deville, Deville Huntington & Fishing Club; Hineston, Hineston Huntington & Fishing Club. Richland (2 klaverns): Delhi, Delhi Sportsman Club; Rural community, Boeuf River Hunting Club. Tensas (1 klavern): Tensas Sportsman Club. West Carroll (1 klavern); West Carroll Riflemen Club. Winn (1 klavern): Winnfield Hunting & Fishing Club. Briefly, the Original Knights operated under the cover of Christian Constitutional Crusaders in Monroe and Winnsboro. In addition to the Original Knights' klaverns in Concordia at Vidalia and Morville, the Christian Constitutional Crusaders' had one additional local klavern. This one was located in the Monterey area and known as the Black River Lake Sporting Club. • WHITE KNIGHTS OF THE KU KLUX KLAN, MISSISSIPPI While the White Knights were exclusively a Mississippi organization, some members of this militant group in Adams and Franklin counties were involved in Klan operations in Concordia and some Concordia men were involved in the White Knights in Adams County. The White Knights began as an offshoot of the Original Knights of Louisiana in the fall of 1963. By December of 1963, the unofficial formation of the White Knights began in Natchez. By February 1964, 200 former members of the Original Knights met in Brookhaven, Miss., and formed the White Knights. Just three months later, Imperial Wizard Sam Holloway Bowers Jr., a vending machine operator, had taken over the leadership of the White Knights and set up headquarters in his office in Laurel, Miss. Unlike other Klans, the White Knights were so secretive that they did not hold public rallies and would not admit "publicly to any association with the organization." Bowers operated under "military rather than democratic procedures" and was "all powerful in the role of commander in chief," noted HUAC investigators. At one point, the White Knights had 52 klaverns in 42 of the state's 82 counties. In the fall of 1964, there was an estimated 6,000 active members in the White Knights. Area klaverns included: Adams (1 klavern): Natchez. Franklin (2 klaverns): Meadville, Unit No. 1; Bunkley Community, Unit No. 2. Lincoln: (2 klaverns): Brookhaven, Bogue Chitto Unit; Ruth, Lincoln County Unit No. 2. Throughout the summer and fall of 1964, federal heat was on the White Knights. Scores of FBI agents had moved into Mississippi following the murders of three Civil Rights workers in Philadelphia, Miss. This attack was a White Knight hit. The bureau soon infiltrated the White Knights and members began to scatter. By the time Bowers ordered a 90-day moratorium on violence, many White Knights in Adams County and Concordia bolted. By the January 1967, total membership in the White Knights had dwindled to 400. At the Shamrock Hotel cafe in the fall of 1964, some of these militant members of the White Knights formed the Silver Dollar Group, made of men who prided themselves as being the toughest Klansmen anywhere. These men, numbering about 20 and including law enforcement officers, were believed responsible for the murders of Frank Morris, Ferriday's shoe shop owner; Joe "JoeEd" Edwards, a porter at the Vidalia Shamrock; and Wharlest Jackson, an NAACP officer and Armstrong Tire employee. Another man, George Metcalfe, was, like Jackson, the victim of a car bomb, but he survived. The Silver Dollar Group is also believed responsible for this attack and others. Noted HUAC, "Although the violent image of the White Knights was a factor in many switches to the United Klans (of America), the committee discovered that a number of violence-prone members of the White Knights had actually gone over to the United Klans on the grounds that the White Knights was not militant enough." • UNITED KLANS OF AMERICA, MISSISSIPPI & LOUISIANA REALMS The United Klan of America (UKA), Mississippi Realm, was established in McComb in the spring of 1964. By August 1964 -- two months after the shooting at the Morgantown klavern -- Adams County Klansmen were leaving the White Knights and joining the UKA. On Aug. 29, 1964, the UKA's first klavern in Natchez was set up under the front of the Adams County Civic & Betterment Association. The opening of that klavern was part of the celebration at the United Klan rally in Liberty Park in Natchez that day, led by Imperial Wizard Robert M. Shelton of Tuscaloosa, Ala., the organization's leader. At least one HUAC investigator was at the meeting and subpoenaed a few Klansmen in attendance to appear before the committee. Several FBI agents were also at the rally. Noted HUAC, "UKA strategy in Mississippi....was to build an image of nonviolence." This strategy proved so successful that by early 1966 UKA was the dominant Mississippi Klan. In UKA Mississippi, 75 klaverns in 42 counties were established. Locally, those Klaverns included: Adams (2 klaverns): one loosely formed in Natchez at Morgantown; and the headquarters chartered under the name of the Adams County Civic & Betterment Association (Unit No. 719) in Natchez. Lincoln (1 klavern): Brookhaven. Pike (8 klaverns): McComb, McComb Unit No. 700-South Pike Marksmanship Association; McComb Unit Nos. 704, 711, 713, 714, 715; Magnolia; Pricedale, Pricedale Unit. No. 712. The McComb klaverns proved to be the quite active from April to October 1964, according to HUAC, and believed to be responsible for more than 25 bombings or acts of arson in and around the town. In Natchez on Sept. 25, 1964, Mayor Joe Nosser's home was damaged by a "high explosive" bomb, and another bomb was thrown the same night into the yard of a black man named Willie Washington. "Stink bombs" were thrown into Nosser's stores and into a Chevrolet dealership. There were no UKA Louisiana klaverns in Concordia, Catahoula, Franklin, Tensas or LaSalle parishes, but several men from Concordia were active in the organization. There were 30 UKA klaverns statewide in 13 parishes. Of the 13 parishes, 10 were in northeastern Louisiana with seven klaverns in Ouachita, five in Union, and three each in Lincoln and Jackson. By January 1967, it was estimated that UKA Mississippi had 750 members and UKA Louisiana 700 members. http://www.concordiasentinel.com/news.php?id=1249 |
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| monkalup | Jul 10 2008, 01:23 PM Post #4 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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Bloody '64: Klan suspected in murders, assaults, bombings by Stanley Nelson - posted Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 @ 8:04 am George Metcalfe and Wharlest Jackson survived 1964, a bloody year in which the Ku Klux Klan initiated a reign of terror never before seen in this region. But the two Natchez men did not escape the bloodshed. Both paid a heavy price in leading the push for Civil Rights for blacks. Metcalfe was maimed for life in 1965. Jackson was murdered in 1967. In the mid-1960s, a square of Louisiana and Mississippi real estate was the scene of much violence. This stretched from Ferriday and Vidalia eastward to Natchez, Meadville and Brookhaven, from southern Concordia eastward to Woodville, Liberty and McComb, and was bordered by Hwy. 51 (now I-55) on the east. Men in hoods and masks roamed the highways and country roads at night. Those who crossed their paths faced grave danger. Dozens were murdered, scores were beaten and flogged, and hundreds of thousands of dollars of real estate, including homes, businesses and churches, were bombed or torched. While this terrorism continued for years, 1964 was the bloodiest. It was the year the strength of the Ku Klux Klan, especially Sam Bowers' White Knights and Robert Shelton's United Klans, reached record numbers as the Civil Rights movement, backed by new federal legislation, gained a toehold here. It was also the year that the meanest and most violent of the White Knights and other Klan organizations -- about 20 men in all -- spawned the Silver Dollar Group, a bloodthirsty Klan cell linked to at least three murders. Friends of Jackson's and Metcalfe's were among those attacked in 1964. Both men were acquainted with Frank Morris, the Ferriday shoe shop owner murdered in December of that year. When Metcalfe and Jackson decided to take leadership roles in the newly-organized Natchez NAACP in early 1965, they knew they were marked men. "They were both courageous," said Exerlena Jackson, the widow of Wharlest Jackson. As George Metcalfe fought for his life in a Natchez hospital room after a bomb planted in his vehicle's engine compartment exploded in August 1965, Wharlest and Exerlena were among the first to visit his bedside. They and a few friends sat with Metcalfe at the hospital and then at his home on St. Catherine. For almost a year, they nursed him until he was able to return to work. All the while, Wharlest Jackson kept his worries to himself. "He would say nothing," said Exerlena. "It was no use asking him. He always acted like everything was okay. But I knew better." Exerlena had survived Bloody '64, too, which ended with the murders of at least six black men, although the homicide toll was probably much higher. Among those known to be murdered in this region were: MURDERS IN 1964 February 2: Louis Allen, a logger, shot to death in the driveway of his home in Liberty. He had planned to leave the next day for Wisconsin to seek a job as a heavy equipment operator. Unsolved. February 28: Clifton Walker, gunned down on Poorhouse Road just outside Woodville. Unsolved. May 2: Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Moore, both 19, kidnapped at Meadville, and beaten in the Homochitto National Forest. While still alive, their bodies were weighted and dumped into an offshoot of the Mississippi River. Klansman James Ford Seale was convicted and sentenced to three life terms last year for those murders. July 12: JoEd Edwards went missing on July 12 and was last seen at the Shamrock Motel in Vidalia. His car was found abandoned a short time later on the Ferriday-Vidalia Hwy. Bloodstains were found inside. His body has never been found. Unsolved. December 10: Frank Morris in Ferriday confronted two men outside his shoe shop, one holding a shotgun and the other spreading a flammable liquid. A match was thrown igniting an inferno. Morris escaped the building in flames, but died four days later. Unsolved. All the while, the nation focused much of its attention in the summer of 1964 on three Civil Rights workers missing from east central Mississippi -- James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, whose bodies were eventually found. WHIPPINGS, BEATINGS, ROBBERIES, KIDNAPPINGS In early 1964, law enforcement believed there were four different groups of Klansmen roaming at night in Adams County kidnapping, whipping and robbing black men. Most of the suspects were believed to have been members of the Mississippi-based White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the Original Knights, based in Louisiana. Each Klan organization had what one group called "wrecking crews," which committed planned and random acts of violence. The majority of the suspects committing these atrocities were from Concordia Parish, and the Mississippi counties of Adams, Jefferson, Claiborne, Amite and Franklin. One Adams County deputy believed that 17 men -- 16 black, one white -- had been whipped and beaten in January and February of 1964 but only four had reported their attacks to the Adams County Sheriff's Office. Alfred Whitley, an Armstrong employee; James Winston, an International Paper Company employee; and funeral home owner Archie Curtis and assistant Willie Jackson, were kidnapped, stripped and blindfolded by armed men wearing hoods or masks, taken to remote areas and flogged with bullwhips. Whitley was robbed of $45 cash and his payroll check from Armstrong totaling $63. The victims were questioned by their attackers about whether they were involved in the Civil Rights movement or if they were members of the NAACP. Archie Curtis was the only person involved in registering blacks to vote but as he explained to his attackers, there was no NAACP in Natchez at that time. The sheriff's office believed that some of the Klansmen who were members of the labor unions at International Paper (IP) and Armstrong Tire & Rubber were among the Klansmen running loose at night. Police thought they knew most of the men who were committing the crimes but said they didn't have the physical evidence to arrest them. In Franklin County, Leonard Russell, a black employee at IP in Natchez, reported that a man stopped at his Meadville home requesting help with a stalled vehicle. Russell and his wife drove up to the car but quickly proceeded onward when they saw a hooded man standing beside the vehicle. Later, the Russell's home was torched when a grenade was thrown inside. None of these crimes were ever solved. A shooting in April in Adams County, however, did result in arrests. Richard Joe Butler, a 26-year-old farm worker, was attacked by a group of six men, all wearing black hoods. According to news reports, Butler was approached by the men as he stepped from his pickup truck. He escaped on foot, but was shot three times. He survived. In October, the FBI announced the arrests of Ed Fuller, 37, and William Bryant Davidson, 27. Billy Woods of Natchez had been arrested by the sheriff's office two days after the shooting. BOMBINGS, ARSONS Two churches -- the Bethel Methodist Church and the Jerusalem Baptist Church -- were torched in southern Adams County during the early morning hours of July 12, 1964. Later that day, JoeEd Edwards went missing in Vidalia. Four locations in Natchez were bombed on Sept. 24, 1964, but the McComb area was rocked with 23 bombings since February. In fact, there were 37 terrorist acts in the McComb area over a six-month period. United Klans of America wrecking crews bombed 23 locations, including two churches, 14 homes, and five businesses. There were six arsons (four at churches), one shooting, one flogging, one beating and three assaults. In the home of one UKA member, the FBI found 43 items used to commit various crimes, including rifles, pistols, blackjacks, unfinished table legs, ammunition, hypodermic syringes, hoods, goggles, and a deputy sheriff's tin barge. In Natchez, bombs were placed on the lawns of Mayor John Nosser on Linton Avenue, and contractor Willie Washington. No one was hurt in either bombing, but Nosser's home was damaged. The explosion shook the Mississippi River Bridge. Next door at the home of Rawdon and Kathie Blankenstein, windows on the side of the house next to the Nosser's home blew out and the couple's three sleeping children -- ages 2, 3 and 5 -- were covered with glass. Investigators believed that the bombings during this period were "test runs" for future actions. That same night, stink bombs were thrown into Nosser's stores and into the Chevrolet dealership owned by Orrick Metcalfe, a board member at B&K Bank. Police believed Nosser and Metcalfe were targeted because of comments published in a Chicago Daily News article by Nicholas Von Hoffman entitled, "Anti-Antebellum Natchez: How Things Do Change." Nosser told Von Hoffman that whites and blacks were "scared" and that "white hotheads" were well-armed and up to no good. Orrick Metcalfe said "there are a lot of rough people here. I don't know what's going on in this town...There's a lot going on here we know nothing about." By this time, many whites in the community were outraged and frightened over the violence and church bombings. RUN ON AMMUNITION Police learned on Aug. 7, 1964, that the sale of firearms and ammunition was escalating. At the Gibson Tri Wholesale Company in Natchez, the owner said he had recently purchased $100,000 of ammunition for retail sales in Natchez and Adams County. The company typically sold 100 high powered deer rifles, 200 .22 rifles, and 22 target pistols a year. But during the previous six to seven weeks, he said, sales had skyrocketed, particularly .22 bullets in cartons of 10 boxes. He suspected the ammunition was being bought due to "racial troubles." On Oct. 24, 1964, the FBI and Mississippi troopers announced the seizure of a collection of weapons and ammunition in the Natchez home of Klansman Myron Wayne "Jack" Seale, the brother of James Ford Seale. The cache included several high powered automatic rifles, a shotgun, pistols and hunting knives. In response to the escalating violence, the FBI, which had been operating out of the home of resident agent Clarence Prospere, opened an office in Natchez in October 1964. Initially, the office housed 14 special agents, and 11 uniformed and 14 plainclothes Mississippi troopers. Despite the bloodshed of 1964 and although their lives had previously been threatened, George Metcalfe and Wharlest Jackson moved forward with their commitment to Civil Rights. In February 1965, the newly-organized NAACP in Natchez elected Metcalfe as president and Jackson as treasurer. Both men knew this would enrage the Klan. http://www.concordiasentinel.com/print.php?story=2099 |
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| monkalup | Jul 10 2008, 01:26 PM Post #5 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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J. Edgar Hoover's interest in Frank Morris murder by Stanley Nelson - May 22nd, 2008 J. Edgar Hoover's interest in Frank Morris murderFour months after the murder of Ferriday shoe shop owner Frank Morris, a letter sent from Concordia Parish crossed the desk of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, D.C. The letter was typed, double-spaced, directed to J. Edgar Hoover, and signed in type: "The Colored people of Concordia Parish." Dated April 10, 1965, the document contained three sentences: "It was December 18, 1964 on cold night about one o'clock in the morning the KKK burned down Frank Morris shop and him with it, as of now we have not hear what happen to the hill. Is it possible these people are going to get away with this act with out being exposed, even though the police was apart of the gang that permitted this terrible thing to happen. Your office is our only hope so don't fail us." Whether the FBI determined who wrote the letter isn't explained in about 500 pages of redacted documents of the Morris investigation obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The letter had a few errors -- Hoover's name was misspelled "Hover," the date of the arson of Morris' shop was not December 18, 1964, but December 10th, and it is unclear what is meant by the phrase "as of now we have not hear what happen to the hill." The street or post office address on the envelope sent from Ferriday in which the letter was mailed is left blank in the redacted documents. What happened next isn't yet known, but Hoover wanted to know more. In fact, on a few of the Morris' documents, Hoover's initials can be found. He appeared to have a strong interest in the case. Several congressmen were pressing him for information on Morris' murder, particularly Sen. Harrison A. Williams of New Jersey. Hoover's interest may have also been high because of the possible connections of Morris' murder and other acts of violence throughout this region. In many cases, the Ku Klux Klan counted certain members of law enforcement as members, and in other cases as leaders. This deadly confederation, which included the violent Klan cell known as the Silver Dollar Group, was terrorizing both sides of the Mississippi River. In 1964, the deaths of three Civil Rights workers in Philadelphia, Miss., (Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman) received worldwide attention and continues to draw interest. But in 1964 in Concordia Parish, and Adams, Amite, Franklin and Wilkinson counties in Mississippi, at least six were murdered in the region, probably more, and few days went by without some type of violence. In Concordia, Joseph "JoEd" Edwards, a porter at the Shamrock Motel in Vidalia, went missing on July 12, the same day the bodies of two Meadville, Miss., teens -- Charles Moore and Hezekiah Dee (missing since May 2) -- were found in an offshoot of the Mississippi River. A few days later, Edwards' car was found abandoned on the Ferriday-Vidalia Hwy. Blood stains were discovered inside. Louis Allen was shot to death in the driveway of his Liberty, Miss., home on February 1. Clifton Walker was killed by a shotgun blast in Natchez on February 28 and Morris died from the arson of his shoe shop on December 14, four days after the fire. Just a few examples of other violence in Adams County alone in 1964 include the whipping of 56-year-old Alfred Whitley by a half dozen hooded men, the shooting of 26-year-old Richard Joe Butler, explosives detonated near the homes of Mayor Joe Nosser and Willie Washington in Natchez, and the bombings of Nosser's stores and of Orrick Metcalf's Chevrolet dealership. In 1965, FBI Director Hoover heard from the parents of a Civil Rights worker with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) beaten in Ferriday during the summer. He also heard from New York Congressman Richard Ottinger about the beating. Additionally, Hoover received a message dated July 5 from a CORE official sent through Western Union: "Months ago, Frank Morris of Ferriday was burned to death in store by men who are members of or sympathizers with the Ku Klux Klan. Yesterday, two CORE workers beaten in Ferriday while canvassing for voter registration. Nothing has been done in either of these cases to bring the offenders to justice. The words of justice that have fallen from your lips are empty sounds when justice is not part of life in Louisiana. "The negligence of the FBI can be cited in their lack of action under Title 1 of the 1964 Civil Rights law, which gives them the authority to make arrests in cases involving interference in the activities of voter registration workers. "The inadequacy of Concordia Sheriff Cross is evident in the fact that no action has been taken toward the apprehension of the offenders in the heinous crime that took the life of Frank Morris nor in yesterday's beating of Civil Rights workers. You have failed your responsibility as a respected elected official by not seeing that justice is enforced in Concordia. "We feel this situation warrants, indeed, demands immediate action by the FBI, from Sheriff Cross, and from the gubernatorial office in this state." Michael Clurman, then 21, was one of the two workers beaten in Ferriday. Clurman, now a resident of Boston, told The Sentinel a "particularly notorious sheriff's deputy," whom he identified as "Big Frank" Delaughter, stopped his patrol car on the street and dropped off the two men who beat Clurman and another CORE worker -- James Edward Brown. Clurman said an FBI agent "assigned to the town said that he didn't trust Frank and he was known as a Klansman." When Clurman's parents complained about their son's treatment in Ferriday to the Justice Department, a high-ranking official, John Doar, warned the Clurmans that Ferriday was an "outlaw" town and urged them to get their son out of Concordia. Doar wrote the parents: "On the basis of present information the prospect of a successful federal criminal prosecution is not bright. Evidence is lacking that the assailants acted under the color of the law or that they were involved in a conspiracy to deprive citizens of civil rights. We are continuing the investigation, however, and will advise you for our final determination." While the FBI was reportedly "vigorously" pursuing the complaints of the CORE workers, Hoover agreed with the decision not to acknowledge the letter from the CORE official. This official with CORE, said an FBI memo, "has been frequent unjust critic of the Bureau in handling Civil Rights matters." Hoover concurred that past "efforts to straighten him out have been unfruitful," and considered the criticism of the bureau "unwarranted."joeb Regular http://www.campusactivism.org/phpBB3/viewt...9&t=1144&p=5912 |
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| monkalup | Jul 10 2008, 01:28 PM Post #6 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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http://z13.invisionfree.com/PorchlightUSA/...pic=14533&st=0& |
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| Ell | Jul 24 2008, 07:19 AM Post #7 |
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Heart of Gold
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Could a Human skull found in Clayton 6 years ago be part of the remains of JoEd Edwards, the Shamrock Motel Porter? LSU anthropologist Dr. Mary Manhein has a program that can answer that question http://www.theconcordiasentinel.com/news.php?id=2147 |
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Ell Only after the last tree has been cut down; Only after the last fish has been caught; Only after the last river has been poisoned; Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten. | |
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| burnsjl2003 | Jul 25 2008, 02:45 PM Post #8 |
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Advanced Member
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Is skull found in Clayton remains of JoeEd Edwards? by Stanley Nelson - posted Thursday, July 24th, 2008 @ 8:15 am THE BONE LADY -- LSU'S MARY MANHEIN -- MAY BE ABLE TO ANSWER THAT QUESTION Could a human skull found in Clayton six years ago be part of the remains of Joseph "JoeEd" Edwards, the Shamrock Motel porter reported missing and presumed dead since July 12, 1964? LSU forensic anthropologist Dr. Mary H. Manhein, known nationally as "The Bone Lady," has a program in place that can answer that question. The mother of 25-year-old JoeEd Edwards reported him missing to the FBI in Natchez after her son's car was found a few days after his disappearance. The car was found on the street behind the old bowling alley on the Ferriday-Vidalia Hwy. Bloodstains were found inside the car and Edwards' mother told the FBI that "the Klan" was responsible for her son's disappearance. Manhein said the family of Edwards should file a missing persons report in Concordia Parish, and then consider providing a DNA sample. That may not solve the mystery of the human skull found at Clayton in 2002, but it could answer whether it is the remains of Edwards. "We're building a data base for missing persons, but someone has to file a report with a police agency for it to be entered into our program," said Manhein. She said the missing person's parents or children provide the best DNA samples, while siblings are the next best. Manhein visited Clayton six years ago after a Shady Lane resident called the Concordia Parish Sheriff's Office to report that her dog found a skull. "I remember that day well," said Manhein, who along with some of her LSU anthropology students came to Concordia in mid-November 2002, collected the skull and did a brief scan of the area. "We could stay only that afternoon." Since that time, DNA was extracted from the skull and that information entered into CODIS, a national database containing DNA profiles from missing persons, convicted offenders and unsolved crime scene evidence. In 2006, the Louisiana Legislature passed Act 227 which designated Manhein's lab at LSU -- the Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services (FACES) -- as the central repository for "all unidentified human remains information and all missing person data collected" in Louisiana. Manhein said the lab has created a biological database on hundreds of unidentified human remains including age, sex, race, ancestry and "all identifying factors" including DNA. Additionally, law enforcement and criminal justice agencies must submit all unidentified remains found in Louisiana to FACES "after reasonable efforts to identify the person have failed." "As FACES is now Louisiana's repository for biological information and DNA profiles on all cases of unidentified and missing people in Louisiana," said Manhein, "we are slowly visiting all the parishes to collect data on the unidentified and missing persons there. We are contacting the coroners, sheriff's offices and all police departments to gather case information." According to the Concordia Parish Sheriff's Office report, the skull found at Clayton was missing a lower jaw and there was a small hole in the forehead. The sheriff's office reported that the skull appeared to have suffered some type of trauma. Manhein said the skull has yet to be identified. "The face wasn't there, but it is that of a black male, although there is a possibility it is Native American," said Manhein. The Bone Lady recalled that a lot near where the skull was discovered was covered with debris and she may consider returning to the site for further study. "It would be a major effort," she said. "This skull could have been from three to 10 years old at the time of discovery or much, much older. In my mind I remember thinking that this might be a case we might not ever identify." However, she says the fact that Edwards was living with his grandparents in the Clayton area and was reported missing in Concordia Parish makes the possibilities interesting. Syracuse University law student Shayne Burnham made the initial contact with Manhein concerning the Edwards case. Burnham is one of 15 Syracuse students volunteering this summer for the Cold Case Justice Initiative, under the direction of law professors Janis McDonald and Paula Johnson. They are investigating Civil Rights-era cold case murders, including that of Ferriday shoe shop owner Frank Morris. JoeEd Edwards was Julia Dobbins' half-brother. Their mother was Bernice Conner, who died almost two decades ago. A resident of Bridge City, La., Dobbins said Monday she planned to contact Manhein to discuss the DNA issues and other matters relating to her brother's case. Manhein said, however, that unidentified bones from the 1960s "could be gone forever, lost, buried somewhere in a paupers' grave yard, or in the back of somebody's office. This could be the case anywhere in the country." In the matter of identifying the skull found at Clayton, Manhein says there's always hope, even for the old cases such as Edwards, who's been missing for 44 years. Manhein said a 32-year-old mystery was recently resolved. The skeletal remains of a young, Hispanic male found in northwestern Louisiana in the late 1970s has been identified as those of a man reported missing in Texas in 1976. In her book, "The Bone Lady: Life as a Forensic Anthropologist," Manhein points to several difficult cases that were solved through forensic anthropology. "Who knows?" she said, adding, "This Edwards' case is so sad." PHOTO AT LINK http://www.concordiasentinel.com/news.php?id=2163 |
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Lisa “Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.” (On a plaque at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.) | |
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| monkalup | Aug 14 2008, 03:44 PM Post #9 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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http://www.concordiasentinel.com/news.php?id=2182 Forty-four years ago this July, 25-year-old Joe "JoeEd" Edwards was last seen at his job as a porter and handyman at the Shamrock Motel in Vidalia. What's also been just as hard to find has been a photograph of Edwards. Family members say that after his disappearance, sheriff's deputies confiscated photos of Edwards from the home of his grandparents, Jake and Mary King, who lived on Hwy. 900 between Clayton and the Lake St. John road. The say photographs were also taken from the home of Edwards' girlfriend Olga "Algueree" Taylor, who lived in Clayton at the time. None were returned. Family members say the Kings were warned by deputies not to talk to the FBI. Agents showed up at the Kings' home one day asking for dental records of Edwards and other pertinent information. But Edwards' sister and brother-in-law, Julia and Charles Dobbins of Bridge City, La., had kept stored away at their home for the past years a negative of Edwards. Recently rediscovered and provided to The Sentinel, a photograph was made from the negative and appears on this page today. Edwards' early childhood was spent in the Sibley community in Adams County. As a child, he was accidentally scalded when he ran beneath a relative who was pouring boiling water from a pot of salted meat. A short time later, he went to live with the Kings in Concordia, and attended school at Sevier-Rosenwald in Ferriday. He lived with the Kings until his disappearance in 1964. Relatives recall that as a young man Edwards suffered third degree burns in an accident and was hospitalized in Natchez for a short time.
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| monkalup | Jan 16 2009, 10:28 AM Post #10 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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Klansman's son recalls Shamrock, Silver Dollar Group, meeting Joe Edwards by Stanley Nelson - posted Thursday, January 15th, 2009 @ 8:34 am E-mail This Story | Print This Story ![]() In 1964, as Ku Klux Klan groups were growing in Concordia Parish and the Natchez area, members were fighting among themselves over competing strategies for enforcing segregation, differing views on the role of violence and deep suspicions that some Klansmen had been recruited by the FBI as informants. The Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, based in Louisiana, was at odds with the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, based in Mississippi. And the United Klans of America, which grew large by attracting defectors from both of those groups, still didn't satisfy some. For them, there was a particularly vicious group of Klansmen that was formed inside the Shamrock Motel cafe in Vidalia – within earshot of a 16-year old boy, Earcel "Sonny" Boyd Jr. He was brought occasionally with his brothers to the Shamrock by their father, Earcel Boyd Sr., who was a tire builder at Armstrong Tire in Natchez by day and a Klansman on nights and weekends. He was also a part-time carpenter and part-time preacher. Earcel Boyd Sr., his wife, five sons and daughter all lived in Ridgecrest in 1964. Their lives, according to Sonny Boyd, may have appeared normal to the world living outside their 140 Crestview Drive home. But on the inside, Sonny Boyd says his father suffered nightmarish memories of his experiences during World War II and would, on occasion, turn violent. "I was determined at one point to kill him or kill myself," said Sonny Boyd, "I was constantly looking for a way out, but didn't see one. I just survived day to day." Now 61, Sonny Boyd recently described to the Concordia Sentinel a series of meetings inside the Shamrock in 1964 during which Klansmen formed the militant Silver Dollar Group. One meeting held in April that year was particularly memorable, said Boyd, because of a conversation he had that day with a black Shamrock employee, Joe "Joe-Ed" Edwards, whose disappearance a few weeks later remains one of many unsolved mysteries of the civil rights years. Boyd, who now lives in Portland, Ore., and is retired from Xerox Corporation, said he was with his father at the Shamrock early in 1964 when his father and other men went into an adjoining room for a private discussion similar to others he had overheard. "Because of the falling out of the Klans, the FBI began to enlist many Klansmen as informants," said Boyd. "My dad and the other men didn't like the FBI and they didn't trust a lot of the other Klansmen. This was something I overheard them discuss at the Shamrock on two or more occasions." Congressional records confirm that from spring to late summer of 1964, Klan groups were in turmoil. The House un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which investigated the Klan in the mid-1960s, reported that both the White Knights and the Original Knights were suffering massive defections in part because of escalating violence and feuding leadership. Although he was told to stay out of the room adjoining the café, Boyd said he often walked near the doorway where the Klansmen were drinking coffee to eavesdrop. Once he "got growled at" by one of the men "when he saw me standing near the door. I went back to my table." "One time they were talking about the aftermath of the Birmingham bombing where those little girls got killed and they were saying that Civil Rights workers probably did it to stir up more trouble," recalled Boyd. Klansmen were ultimately arrested and convicted in the September 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham which claimed the lives of four black girls, one who was 11 and three who were 14. Boyd said different men were at the various meetings in the back room at the Shamrock. "I knew who some of them were, but only recognized the faces of others. I saw as many as 15 at a time." One meeting stood out, he said. "One man said we have to tighten up our ranks to make sure that integration doesn't even get started around here," said Boyd. "He said if any groups tried to riot here that the streets would run with blood." The man said "the FBI was working on getting stool pigeons because of the falling out of the Klans." Boyd said he heard one of the Klansmen say that hard-core segregationists needed "a way so that everybody can prove their worth and can be trusted. Those who prove themselves worthy can carry one of these, and he pulled a coin out of his pocket and held it up." Later Boyd realized it was a silver dollar. Boyd recalled another man saying, "You can't be trusted until you have one of these. And it ain't any good unless it has your year of birth on it. That's how we'll identify." Says Boyd, "The silver dollar became a symbol of exclusivity among these men and their beliefs." He said he heard the man holding the silver dollar say, "No one gets in or out without one of these. I could see part of the table and I tried to see if my dad had a silver dollar. I don't think he did at that time, but before long he began carrying one and he was proud of it." After one of the Silver Dollar Group meetings at the Shamrock, Boyd said, he asked his dad on the drive to their family home at Ridgecrest "how he could be a minister and Klansman at the same time. I asked him if he had a silver dollar. He said I was never to mention that again. He cut me right off. He said I should never mention that to him or to anybody. He said there were people who could make me disappear." Two of the men Boyd knew to be Silver Dollar Group members were from Natchez "and both had prison records. One was really a scary guy. Some of the men were really brazen in the way they flaunted their notoriety. One of them had been followed from Natchez to the Shamrock one day by two FBI agents. When he left the Shamrock he noticed one of the agents sitting in his car. As he walked out he turned and eyed the FBI agent, stuck his thumb on the end of his nose with his fingers up and waving, and stuck out his tongue." In April 1964, a short time after Sonny Boyd was seriously injured in an automobile accident, he sat at a table eating a hamburger at the Shamrock while his dad met with Klansmen in the back room. It was at this time that he met a 25-year-old black employee named Joseph "Joe-Ed" Edwards. "The whole right side of my head got shaved after the accident and Joe asked what happened to me," said Boyd. "I had seen him working there many times, but this was the only time I talked to him. Joe was leaned over with his elbows on the counter and his forearms crossed. He was bored. Sometimes things would get a little slow." Boyd recalled that Edwards "had a burn scar, a white patch on his neck," a mark Edwards' younger sister, Julia Dobbins of Bridge City, La., confirmed this week. "When Joe was young he was running through the house one day and knocked a pot on the stove in the kitchen," said Dobbins. "He was scalded on the right side of his neck and part of the face. It left a mark." "He told me that his grandparents lived out near the pecan grove outside Ferriday," said Boyd. Edwards' grandparents, Jake and Mary King, resided on Red Gum Road near the pecan grove, and Edwards was also residing there when he was working at the Shamrock prior to his disappearance. On July 13, 1964, Edwards left work at the Shamrock Motel and was never seen again. When his car was towed into Beatty's Gulf Station, bloodstains were found inside, according to the Rev. Robert Lee Sr. of Clayton, 95, who knew Edwards. Boyd recalled hearing that Edwards' car was found along the Ferriday-Vidalia Highway near the bowling alley. He also recalls when the vehicle was towed to Beatty's Gulf Station in Ferriday. "I remember the hoopla," said Boyd, who was working at Bill Spuiell's Texaco station next door to the Gulf station. "I don't recall seeing the car, but I remember there was a lot of activity about the place," said Boyd. "I remember talking to a customer about what happened to Joe." Boyd said that "someone from the sheriff's department was there and two FBI agents. I knew the FBI cars. They drove two 1964 Chevrolets and they were a different shade of green and both cars had two or more antennas on them. Oftentime, the agents would stop at Spueill's and fill up with a gas card." But, said Boyd, "I never heard a hint of who got Joe. It was one of the most hushed things around here. One of things we heard the least about was Joe's disappearance. It was like he had fallen off the edge of the earth. We knew someone had gotten him and someone locally. Didn't know exactly why or who." Edwards' body has never been found, but retired FBI agent Billy Bob Williams, who was one of two resident agents in Natchez from July 1964 through August 1966, told The Sentinel recently that an informant told agents that Edwards had been skinned alive by Klansmen. Rev. Lee said he was told that Edwards had been taken by Klansmen into Mississippi, shot multiple times, and his lifeless body chained and thrown into the Mississippi River. Dobbins, Edwards' younger sister, said the family was told at one time that Edwards was in a nursing home "and that his tongue had been cut out." Sonny Boyd thinks he knows who was responsible for Edwards' disappearance. "I think it was some of the Silver Dollar Group," said Boyd. "Joe probably saw too much and heard too much. He had access all over the Shamrock and he could go anywhere he wanted to be there." Boyd says there were also rumors that Edwards was dating white women. Edwards' first cousin, Carl Ray Thompson, now an alderman in Clayton, said Edwards told him at the time that he was dating white women and once, while with a white woman in a room at the Shamrock, a white man burst inside "and caught him. He said there were some men who wanted to kill him right then but the white woman said she would tell if they hurt him." Thompson said he begged Edwards for his own safety to stop dating white women, particularly at the Shamrock. Boyd said it was also rumored that Edwards "was transporting prostitutes to Concordia, some south of Vidalia around Morville" before Morville Lounge became known as a house of ill repute and a gambling den. FBI agents interviewed a handful of Edwards' relatives after his disappearance, but there are few public documents available on the probe. At the Shamrock, members of the Silver Dollar Group continued to meet over coffee, while Earcel Boyd Sr. also became active in the United Klans of America (UKA), Realm of Louisiana, rising to the state's second highest office by 1967. A UKA chapter, Mississippi Realm, was chartered and opened an office in Natchez on the corner of Canal and Main in August 1964, just one month after Edwards' disappearance. But it was the Silver Dollar Group -- not the UKA, White Knights or Original Knights -- which became known as the most violent in the days after Edwards' disappearance. Retired FBI agents confirm that the Silver Dollar Group was real and that its members were believed responsible for the December 1964 arson/murder of Ferriday shoe shop owner Frank Morris, for the August 1965 car bomb that maimed Armstrong Tire employee George Metcalfe, and the February 1967 car bomb that killed Wharlest Jackson Sr., also an Armstrong employee. Metcalfe and Jackson were each members of the NAACP, which was organized in Natchez in the winter of 1964. Metcalfe was president and Jackson secretary. Metcalfe had been involved in registering blacks to vote prior to the attack on him and Jackson had just accepted a position at Armstrong held only by white men in the past. Both he and Metcalfe had been threatened by known Klansmen working at the plant. Morris may have been killed, according to FBI documents, because of alleged associations with white women. One FBI document indicates that an informant told agents that the wife of a law enforcement officer claimed Morris propositioned her for sex while other information suggested that Morris was supposed to call the woman to set up a date but didn't. Sonny Boyd and two of his younger brothers say their father, despite his strong segregationist views and Klan membership, was a close friend of Morris. They said their father was grief-stricken by the murder and searched for the men responsible. No one has ever been arrested for the attacks on Edwards, Morris, Metcalfe or Jackson. http://www.theconcordiasentinel.com/news.php?id=3026 |
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| monkalup | Jan 16 2009, 10:31 AM Post #11 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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1966 end of the line for Vera, with butterfly tattoo, and the girls of Morville by Stanley Nelson - posted Thursday, February 28th, 2008 @ 9:11 am E-mail This Story | Print This Story For Vera with the butterfly tattoo, and the other girls of Morville, mid-summer 1966 was the end of their working days in Concordia Parish. On the afternoon of Saturday, July 30 -- 19 months after the murder of Ferriday shoe shop owner Frank Morris -- 13 State Police detectives checked into three different hotels in Natchez. At 10:30 that night, however, instead of sleeping in their beds, the detectives were 13 miles south of Vidalia -- joined by two local State Troopers -- raiding a whorehouse better known as the Morville Lounge. While this raid was an attack on gambling and prostitution and the criminals associated with that activity, it was also an attack on much more. Watching this raid from a distance were agents with the FBI, who were in Concordia Parish investigating the Dec. 10, 1964, murder of Morris and the July 12, 1964, disappearance of Vidalia Shamrock Motel porter JoEd Edwards, who has never been found. The FBI saw a connection. Some of the same men operating in the shadows of Morville were also believed to have been involved in Morris' death, and in Edwards' disappearance. The connection was through a loose network of criminals and law officers who were Ku Klux Klansmen operating through an organization called the Silver Dollar Group, organized at the Shamrock Motel cafe in Vidalia in 1964. These men were said to be as mean as cottonmouths. In a 1999 unauthorized biography of Jimmy Swaggart, author Ann Rowe Seaman quotes Frank Rickard, a former Natchez Police Department captain who died in 2000, as saying the men in the Silver Dollar Group "were violent, nothing but trash...The Klan was not violent until this bad element got in." The Silver Dollar Group was also believed responsible for the car bombings which maimed Armstrong Tire & Rubber Company worker George Metcalfe on Aug. 27, 1965, and killed another company employee, Wharlest Jackson, on Feb. 27, 1967. Both bombs were planted in the men's vehicles parked outside the Natchez plant while the men were inside working. When State Police detectives entered the Morville Lounge in late July 1966, four or five men were drinking at the bar while one man and a woman emerged from the back. Said a State Police detective at the time: "There were 10 bedrooms -- all ready for business." Through a peep hole and a "clever light system," the bartender knew that when "a room is in use, a light goes on." The raid came during a slow time for prostitution. The biggest months were during hunting season, according to court records, when men from throughout the region descended to scope the fertile hunting grounds of southern Concordia. Court records also show that the manager of the bar was asked to close Morville for a day or two in the winter of 1966 because Otto Passman of Monroe would be in the area on a hunt and it was feared that the congressman would be offended by the whorehouse. But the girls kept working. In the beginning in 1965, according to hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The Sentinel in recent weeks, only three or four girls worked at Morville. An expansion project began that summer and when the Internal Revenue Service raided the place a short time afterward one arrest was made and several slot machines destroyed. But rather than shut down, the bar continued the expansion and brought in more gambling devices. Air conditioners were purchased at Wisdom's Tire Service in Ferriday Lumber was bought at Concordia Lumber. Staple groceries, mostly canned goods, were purchased wholesale from Russell Company in Natchez for resale, especially to hunters and fishermen. From super markets in Vidalia, the lounge purchased food for its employees, which included a manager, bartenders, and the working girls, whose services drew the interest of so many high school boys that they drove to Morville just to see the lounge and say they'd been there. Although Morville operated for only about two years, it employed girls from all over Louisiana. At first, only two or three rooms were in operation before demand dictated the expansion to 10 rooms, each with a bed and plumbing. Some of the girls included Margie, also known as Tammie, from Crowley. Shirley was also from Crowley and also had another name -- Faye. Mary worked only one week in 1965 and left. Samantha, who weighed only 90 pounds, recalled that sometimes men would show up at the lounge with one or more girls in their vehicles. The men walked to a trailer connected to the lounge and talked to the manager. Sometimes, the girls would go right to work. Sometimes they'd leave. In the early months, girls paid a $3 room rental fee when turning "a trick." They also paid $3 per day for room and board and this increased in the second year to $5. Something known as a "short trick" cost the client $10. Girls could also negotiate their own fees for "buy out" dates, where they left the premises. One girl, Betty, went on a "buy out" date to a ranch in Catahoula Parish. But the $3 rental fee still had to be paid at Morville. These funds were collected by the bartender and put away for settlement later, usually by daybreak when a long night's work came to an end. If the girls weren't brought to the lounge by their pimp, they'd come through arrangements still not clear today. Lisa, 24, came to Vidalia on a bus from Lake Charles then took a Yellow Cab to Morville. Sandy, 5-ft. tall, with a "stocky build," took the bus from Lafayette. Jody and June came from Shreveport on busses. June, who was just three inches shy of 6-ft., worked three months, left, and then returned. Jody was 5 ft.-2 in. tall and had dark hair. In 1966, when FBI agents were seen outside Morville, Vera, Diane and Sam left. Vera, a brunette in her early 30s, was from New Orleans. Morville not only drew the attention of the State Police and the FBI, it also drew the ire of a group of ministers in Concordia Parish who also wanted the gambling stopped. While gambling and prostitution became the focal point of state and federal investigations as the 1960s came to a close, the probes into the attack on George Metcalfe, the murders of Frank Morris and Wharlest Jackson, and the disappearance of JoeEd Edwards were all but forgotten. Now the FBI is giving Morris' murder one last look. And the girls of Morville left Concordia never to return. Only Vera, who would be in her 70s today if she still lives, possessed a mark which would still identify her. According to documents, she had a butterfly tattooed on one thigh. http://www.concordiasentinel.com/news.php?id=1481 |
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| monkalup | Jan 16 2009, 10:39 AM Post #12 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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Rev. Lee visited Morris on deathbed; was to marry JoEd Edwards & girlfriend by Stanley Nelson - posted Thursday, June 26th, 2008 @ 9:43 am E-mail This Story | Print This Story Before Frank Morris died in his hospital room, the Rev. Robert E. Lee Jr. paid him a visit and prayed for him. Before JoEd Edwards went missing at the Shamrock Motel in Vidalia, Lee was preparing to perform a marriage ceremony for Edwards and his girlfriend, Olga "Algueree" Taylor. "When JoEd turned up missing we thought he'd gotten 'cold feet,'" said Lee. Morris died from severe burns suffered after his shoe shop was torched by two white men on Dec. 10, 1964. The FBI is presently taking another look at that murder. Edwards, a porter at the Shamrock Motel in Vidalia, went missing on July 12, 1964. Friends say Edwards, although engaged, was carrying on an affair with a white woman at the motel and was kidnapped and killed because of that affair. Gruesome stories circulated on what the Ku Klux Klan and a handful of law enforcement officers did to Edwards. His body has never been found. As previously reported in The Sentinel, when Lee heard about the fire at Morris' shop, he made a point to visit him in the hospital. "I've never seen anybody burned so badly," said Lee. "Only the bottom of his feet weren't burned. He was horrible to look at. He was in no shape to communicate." He sat with Morris for a short time. No one else was in the room. After prayer, he prepared to leave, and asked, "Frank, who did this to you?" "Two white friends," Morris answered. "He never called the names," Lee said. For Lee, now 94, these two cases, which have never been solved, were just snapshots of a lifetime. His personal journey has been filled with both joy and disappointment, but his mission to preach the gospel and help people find love for one another continues on a day-by-day basis. Age has slowed him physically, but it has not stopped his work. His prayer for all, he said, is that "we all live to be the people that God wants us to be." Robert Lee Jr. was born Aug. 26, 1913, in a community once known as Dennisfield, named after the property owner. It was located three miles north of Clayton on the Catahoula side of the Tensas River. The road to Sicily Island in those days paralleled the river from Clayton to Foules. He remembers it as a time when everybody was poor, black and white. "You spelled poor 'p-o-o-o-o-r' then," he said. Lee's father, Robert Sr., worked for the railroad. His mother, Jennie England Lee, bore 12 children. Only 10 grew to adulthood. Lee was the sixth child. While he was a youngster, the family moved to a plantation in Concordia west of Clayton called hell Pocket, a name whose origin Lee never knew. "We raised just about everything we ate except sugar and coffee," Lee remembers. "Everybody had a small farm then. We worked from sunup to sundown. We raised cotton and corn and beans. Every family had a cow, a hog and some chickens." The school he attended while growing up was at Mt. Zion Baptist Church, which at that time was located between Clayton and Dunbarton. "We only went three to four months a year," recalled Lee. Beatrice Carroll was the teacher. She taught 65 poor black children with older students helping to teach the young ones. One of those older students who helped teach Lee was Maggie Smith. He officiated at her funeral service a couple of years ago. In 1937, Lee married Lavinia Warren following a long courtship. "My wife was educated in Arkansas," he said. "She was a great help to me in my studies." Lavinia's father died in 1930 and the family moved to Arkansas. When her mother died in 1934, she returned to Clayton to live with her older brother, Anthony Warren. "We were engaged three years before marrying," Lee said. Both were among the fortunate who had jobs. Lee worked at the sawmill 10 hours a day, earning nine cents an hour -- 90 cents day. "I didn't complain," he said. "I was glad to work." In the days of the Great Depression, competition for work was fierce. "If I had walked off my job, there were three men waiting to take my place," he said. "Men slept in the boiler rooms because they had nowhere else to go. They were good men who were on hard times like all of us. They rode the trains from town to town looking for jobs." He recalls seeing many hobos who rode the trains. At the Clayton depot they would fan out looking for food. "They said if there's children in the yard there's food in the house," said Lee, who recalls that his mother never turned a hungry man away. His wife Lavinia cooked for a Mr. Hatten, who along with a man named Bishop, owned a grocery store in Clayton. She earned 50 cents day, $2.50 a week. "The ladies were just like the men," said Lee. "They were glad to have a job." The couple's wedding was held along the railroad tracks. Loose crossties along the tracks served as chairs. The Rev. Jimmy Carter married the couple wearing a borrowed shirt. Before the wedding, the preacher's brother, Edgar, and Edgar's girlfriend got into an argument. The girlfriend ran to Carter's house for protection. Edgar followed. He was drunk. "They (the two brothers) got into a fight," said Lee. In the shuffle, the preacher's white shirt -- his only shirt -- was torn to shreds and he was forced to borrow another to perform the ceremony. Edgar died years later without ever recovering from his alcohol addiction. About 30 people attended the wedding. A few of the women baked cakes. "Somebody brought some chicken," said Lee. They drank water. To everyone's delight, Dr. Herman Gibson's mother, Carrie, cooked and delivered a wedding cake. Gibson, who is 84, said he remembers spending time with Lee. "I'm about 10 years younger than him and he's known me all of my life," said Gibson. "His family used to farm our land in Clayton and I grew up around the Lee family." Gibson recalls that he and Lee would "go rabbit hunting. We also cut cane to make syrup." He said he remembered Lee walked a straight path. "He didn't get into trouble," Gibson said. "He was very studious." "Neighbors cared about each other then," Lee said. "They helped each other. There were no hospitals. People would sit with the sick. They'd take turns so that the sick were never alone and so that the families had help." Not that things were perfect, either. Poor black people in those days faced many obstacles in addition to blatant racism. Lee joined the Army in 1942 after the couple's first son, Willis, was born. He was stationed in Tennessee, and once his wife came to visit. However, there was not a hotel that would provide a room for a black person. Lee found a place for his family to stay with "a black lady." But finding transportation for his wife and son on the trip home was difficult. The bus was filled with white people with one seat vacant next to the driver. Lee waited for the driver to make arrangements for his wife to take a seat, but it never happened. Blacks got a ride on a bus in those days only if there was room in the back. Twenty-five years later "that baby my wife held in her arms drove the same route for Greyhound Bus Company," Lee said. On Aug. 10, 1946, he was among the first blacks to register to vote in Jefferson Parish. The voter registration certificate he received remains a treasured memento for Lee. He was also among the first blacks to register in Concordia Parish in 1950. "There were 14 of us men," Lee said. "We stood up against a wall for four hours. There were chairs there but we weren't allowed to sit. We had been told not to bring our wives." The registrar told Lee and the other men, once they were allowed to register, to ask no questions. If they made a mistake on the registration form, the registrar said the form would be "torn up" and thrown away. Lee has preached for decades and has been a member of the St. Mark Baptist Church in Clayton for 81 years. Lee pastored at St. John Baptist in Delhi 36 years before stepping down due to the distance from his home to the church. His role models included Allen Tanner; Toll Collins, his first Sunday school teacher; Bush Burrell; and Rev. Philip Washington, who pastored St. Mark. "He baptized me in 1926," Lee said. Once their sons (Willis, Robert III, James and Curtis) were grown, Lee and his wife traveled. They've visited the White House and in 1980 Lee was a delegate to the White House Conference on Families in Minneapolis, MN. He was officially invited to the Bush-Quayle inauguration in 1989, but a woman from the church thought his invitation was junk mail. He did not receive the document until the day of the inauguration. "We find it pretty funny although she was upset about it," Lee said. Lee drove a school bus route for 33 years in Clayton. When Lee first started driving, he was elected to represent the black bus drivers, but was not welcomed inside the School Board meetings when the Board was in session. But that changed. When he retired, the bus driver group was integrated, and as president, Lee was the first and only black in the state to serve as head of an integrated school bus driver's organization. Just as significantly, this man who was once denied the right to attend a public School Board meeting saw the day when his son, James, became superintendent of the same school system. Lee also helped to organize the first black Boy Scouts Troop in Concordia in 1958. James Lee said the troop was a positive experience for many young men. St. Mark Baptist Church sponsored the troop, which disbanded in 1989. Rev. Lee organized the Red Gum Waterworks between Ferriday and Clayton, which serves 168 families today. He also helped get cable television in the area, but cable line construction ended just before it reached his house. "They said it was too expensive to go any further," said Lee. Lee said the problems of drugs and the disintegration of families are his biggest concerns today. But this 94-year-old pastor, whose wife of 63 years, Lavinia, died in 2001, is continuing to live what has been a life of triumph. "I'll go onward as long as the Lord allows me," said Lee. http://www.concordiasentinel.com/news.php?id=2056 |
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| tatertot | Mar 26 2009, 10:04 AM Post #13 |
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Advanced Member
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http://www.theconcordiasentinel.com/news.php?id=3337 Bone Lady returning to Clayton in search for JoeEd Edwards by Stanley Nelson - posted Thursday, March 26th, 2009 @ 8:18 am LSU forensic anthropologist Mary H. Manhein will return to Concordia Parish this summer to search for skeletal remains near the site of the discovery of a human skull in 2002. Manhein is in the process of trying to identify the skull and has taken a DNA sample from the sister of Joseph "JoeEd" Edwards. Edwards has been missing since 1964 and is believed to have been murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. Based on the preliminary study of the age of the skull, Manhein said it's possible it could be the remains of Edwards. "We won't know until we fully look into it," said Manhein. "We know it was someone and we want to try to put a name to this person." Edwards, who was 25 when he disappeared 45 years ago, lived with his grandparents on Hwy. 900 just outside of Clayton. Bloodstains were found inside his two-toned blue and beige 1958 Buick, which was discovered near the bowling alley on the Ferriday-Vidalia Hwy. He was last seen at his job at the Shamrock Motel in Vidalia on July 12, 1964. The Shamrock was a known Ku Klux Klan hangout at the time and was where Edwards, a black man, was employed as a porter and handyman. U.S. Atty. Donald Washington told The Sentinel that "there is no file" on Edwards, which Washington said means that an investigation into his disappearance was apparently never launched 45 years ago by the FBI for reasons unclear today. "We don't know why there was no investigation," said Washington, although he noted that tidbits on Edwards' disappearance are found in other documents, including the file of Frank Morris, the Ferriday shoe shop owner who was murdered in the arson of his business, which was also his home, six months after Edwards' disappearance. No arrests were ever made in Morris' case despite an intensive investigation more than four decades ago. Manhein said a more intensive search of a site in Clayton is being planned for this summer with a team of anthropology students. "It wouldn't hurt to look again," said Manhein, who came to Clayton in 2002 after the Concordia Parish Sheriff's Office reported the discovery of the skull at Clayton. The skull is missing its lower jaw and has a small hole in the forehead. Manhein said the skull is that of a black male, possibly a Native American. She plans to dig and sift through a debris-filled lot near the site where the skull was discovered. "We hope to work with the sheriff's office and we're going to need a backhoe," she said. "We were here only for an afternoon a few years ago and we plan for a more indepth search this summer." Sheriff Randy Maxwell pledged to help Manhein and her anthropological team in every way possible. "This unidentified person was someone's son, brother or father," he said. "If we can help a family solve the mystery of where their loved one's remains are located, we want to do that." Known as "The Bone Lady" for her work in forensic anthropology, Manhein's lab at LSU has been designated by the Louisiana Legislature as the central repository for unidentified human remains and missing person data. The facility is known as FACES -- the Forensic Computer Enhancement Services. Manhein said the first lab to process the Clayton skull was unable to extract DNA. "I've sent it to another lab," she said. "We're not going to take 'no' for an answer." She said the age of the skull and "weathering" makes the work difficult. "The skull wasn't in a box," she said. "The bone was out in the elements. Organic material has been replaced by inorganic material due to leaching in and out of bones. That's how fossilization occurs." Knowing that "weatherizing degrades DNA," Manhein said "if we are unable to get nuclear DNA we'll try for mitochondrial DNA." A few months ago, the FACES lab took a DNA sample from Julia Dobbins of Bridge City, La. Dobbins is Edwards' sister and she recalls going with her mother, Bernice Conner, to Ferriday in the summer of 1964 after her brother's car was towed to the Gulf Station. A source from Ferriday who asked not to be identified told The Sentinel that the service station's owner, Cecil Beatty, was contacted by Concordia Parish Sheriff's Deputy Frank Delaughter to tow the car to Ferriday. The FBI was first notified of Edwards' disappearance when Bernice Conner walked into the bureau's newly-opened office in Natchez in the fall of 1964 and spoke to Billy Bob Williams, an FBI agent who has since retired and now lives in Portland, Ore. Williams said Conner "was very upset and said the Klan had got her boy." Williams notified the FBI's New Orleans' office, which handles Louisiana investigations. An Oct. 26, 1964, Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol (MHSP) report found in the McClain Library at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg identifies two MHSP officers --- Gwin Cole and H.T. Richardson -- along with FBI agent H. Warren Tool, as having briefly looked into Edwards' disappearance. Williams said the FBI was told by an informant that Edwards was skinned alive. Other sources say Edwards was kidnapped, taken to Mississippi, tortured, and shot numerous times before his body was chained and thrown in the river. Relatives and friends have told The Sentinel that Edwards was sexually involved with white women while working at the Shamrock. A female employee of the Shamrock told MHSP that she once watched a white woman and Edwards separately enter a unit of the Maple Courts, a group of bungalows located beside the Shamrock. Edwards' sexual involvement with white women was dangerous in 1964, said retired FBI agent Williams. "This situation considering the racial climate and the Klan at that time would certainly have put any black man's life at risk who was involved with a white woman," said Williams. To make matters even more dangerous, the son of a deceased Ku Klux Klansman told The Sentinel he recalled meeting Edwards in April 1964 at the very time Klan members were assembled in an adjoining room at the Shamrock Motel cafe. Earcel "Sonny" Boyd Jr. says his father -- Earcel Boyd Sr. -- and other Klansmen were organizing the notorious Klan offshoot known as the Silver Dollar Group while he and Edwards chatted in the cafe three months' before Edwards' disappearance. The FBI believed this militant Klan cell was responsible for the arson/murder of Morris in 1964, the car bomb murder of Natchez NAACP secretary Wharlest Jackson in Natchez in 1967 and the car bombing which seriously-injured NAACP president George Metcalfe in Natchez in 1965. |
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| monkalup | Mar 26 2009, 09:00 PM Post #14 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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Go Mary! This is just amazing news! |
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| tatertot | Apr 30 2009, 03:32 PM Post #15 |
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Advanced Member
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http://www.theconcordiasentinel.com/news.php?id=3493 No human remains found during Bone Lady's search in Clayton by Stanley Nelson - posted Thursday, April 30th, 2009 @ 8:18 am LSU forensic anthropologist Mary Manhein and her team surveyed a wooded area in Clayton on Tuesday in search of human remains, but found none. Manhein, known as "The Bone Lady," also searched an area where the skull of a black male or Native American was found in 2002 and is attempting to determine if it is the remains of Joseph "Joe-Ed" Edwards, who went missing in July 1964 in Concordia Parish and was believed to have been murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. ABC News correspondent John Donvan and producer Maggie Burbank followed Manhein to Clayton as they prepare a show on The Bone Lady to be aired on Nightline in a few days. Work to extract nuclear DNA from the skull has thus far been unsuccessful, said Manhein, despite two attempts. She said work will now begin to see if mitochondrial DNA can be obtained. She said the skull found in Clayton is missing its lower jaw and has a small hole in the forehead. Manhein's lab at LSU is the central repository for unidentified human remains and missing person data in Louisiana. She is director of the facility known as FACES -- the Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement. A few months ago, FACES personnel took a DNA sample from Joe-Ed Edwards' sister -- Julia Dobbins of Bridge City, La. If DNA can be extracted from the skull, that sample can be matched against the sample taken from Dobbins, said Manhein. Captain Frankie Carroll of the Concordia Parish Sheriff's Office was with the Manhein team throughout the day. Janis McDonald of Syracuse University School of Law in New York was also in Clayton on Tuesday. She and Paula Johnson, both professors at the school, are the founders of Cold Case Justice Initiative, which is dedicated to the resolution of unsolved Civil Rights-era murders. Edwards, 25-years-old when he went missing on July 13, 1964, lived with his grandparents on Hwy. 900 (Red Gum Road), about three to four miles from where the skull was found in Clayton in 2002. Edwards was last seen by a kitchen employee at the Shamrock Motel cafe in Vidalia in July 1964, where Edwards worked as a handyman and porter. His two-toned blue and beige 1958 Buick, with bloodstains inside, was discovered along the Ferriday-Vidalia Hwy. near the old bowling alley at a point about eight miles from Clayton. Weeks after his disappearance in 1964, Edwards' mother, now deceased, told the FBI in Natchez that the Klan had kidnapped and likely murdered her son. |
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9:44 AM Jul 11