Devils Walking Read online

  DEVILS WALKING

  DEVILS WALKING

  Klan Murders along the Mississippi in the 1960s

  STANLEY NELSON

  Foreword by GREG ILES

  Afterword by HANK KLIBANOFF

  Louisiana State University Press Baton Rouge

  Published by Louisiana State University Press

  Copyright © 2016 by Louisiana State University Press

  All rights reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First printing

  Designer: Michelle A. Neustrom

  Typeface: Sentinel

  Printer and binder: McNaughton & Gunn, Inc.

  Cold-case and Klan material adapted from Stanley Nelson’s articles in the Concordia Sentinel is reproduced with permission of the Concordia Sentinel.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Nelson, Stanley, 1955 —author.

  Title: Devils Walking : Klan Murders Along the Mississippi in the 1960s / Stanley Nelson ; foreword by Greg Iles ; afterword by Hank Klibanoff.

  Description: Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016012820| ISBN 978-0-8071-6407-5 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-0-8071-6408-2 (pdf) | ISBN 978-0-8071-6409-9 (epub) | ISBN 978-0-8071-6410-5 (mobi)

  Subjects: LCSH: African Americans—Violence against—Mississippi—History—20th century. | Ku Klux Klan (1915– )—History—20th century. | Murder—Mississippi—History—20th century. | Murder—Investigation—Mississippi—History—20th century. | Ku Klux Klan (1915– )—Interviews. | Witnesses—Mississippi—Interviews. | Interviews—Mississippi. | Racism—Mississippi—History—20th century. | Corruption—Mississippi—History—20th century. | Mississippi—Race relations—History—20th century.

  Classification: LCC E185.93.M6 N38 2016 | DDC 322.4/2097620904—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016012820

  The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

  May they never be forgotten:

  Henry Hezekiah Dee

  Joseph Edwards

  Earl Hodges

  Wharlest Jackson

  Charles Moore

  Frank Morris

  Clifton Walker

  Ben Chester White

  And to the memory of:

  Sam Hanna

  John Pfeifer

  Billy Bob Williams

  They were “devils a-walkin’ [the] earth

  a-seekin’ what [they] could devour.”

  —Charlie Davenport, ex-slave

  Natchez, Mississippi

  Late 1930s, describing the Ku Klux Klan

  CONTENTS

  Foreword, by Greg Iles

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  1. Why Frank?

  2. The Kingpin, Big Frank DeLaw, and the Klan

  1964

  3. Abductions, Whippings, and Murder

  4. Superior by Blood

  5. A Great Storm Gathering

  6. A Declaration of War

  7. “The Colored People of Concordia Parish”

  1965

  8. “Why Do They Hate Us So?”

  9. “Crippled Johnny” and the Alcoholic Mechanic

  10. Outlaw Country

  1966

  11. “Oh, Lord, What Have I Done to Deserve This?”

  1967

  12. Code Name: WHARBOM

  Epilogue: New Investigations

  Afterword, by Hank Klibanoff

  Appendix: Biographies

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  FBI AGENTS

  Paul Lancaster, who taped two interviews with Frank Morris

  John Pfeifer, whose investigations led to the convictions of Sheriff Cross and Deputy DeLaughter

  Billy Bob Williams, who followed KKK members in Natchez

  LAW ENFORCEMENT

  Ferriday police chief Bob Warren

  Noah Cross in Ferriday, circa 1940

  Natchez police chief J. T. Robinson with detectives Charlie Bahin and Frank Rickard

  Noah Cross taking the oath for his eighth term in July 1972

  Vidalia police chief J. L. “Bud” Spinks

  Noah Cross with Frank DeLaughter after their release from federal prison

  SILVER DOLLAR GROUP MURDER SUSPECTS

  Raleigh J. “Red” Glover, head of the Silver Dollar Group

  Kenneth Norman Head

  Homer T. “Buck” Horton

  Elden “Junkman” Hester

  Tommie Lee Jones

  E. D. Morace

  Ernest B. Parker

  Coonie Poissot

  James L. Scarborough

  Sonny Taylor

  James Ford Seale

  Myron Wayne “Jack” Seale

  VICTIMS

  Joseph Edwards, who disappeared in 1964

  Earl Hodges in front of his shop, circa 1950s

  Frank Morris and workers in front of his shoe shop, circa 1950s

  Morris’s bedroom in the back of his shoe shop after the 1964 arson

  Rubble of Morris’s shoe shop

  George Metcalfe’s car following the bombing in 1965

  Wharlest Jackson, the Silver Dollar Group’s final target

  Jackson’s pickup following the bombing in 1967

  Blasting cap leg wire used in the bombing of Jackson’s car

  Henry Hezekiah Dee, killed by Klansmen in 1964

  Charles Moore, killed by Klansmen

  Thelma Collins, Canadian filmmaker David Ridgen, and Thomas Moore

  OTHER

  Curt Hewitt, manager of the mob-run Morville Lounge

  E. L. McDaniel, grand dragon of the United Klans of America and later an FBI informant

  Silver dollar given to Klansman Earcel Boyd

  Earcel Boyd, who preached in black churches while a member of the Silver Dollar Group

  Ernest Avants, following his arrest in the beating of two civil rights workers

  Father August Thompson, who prayed with Frank Morris

  James Goss, whose complaint led to Joseph Edwards’s disappearance

  L. C. Murray, one of three Silver Dollar Group Klansmen still living in 2015

  Stanley Nelson interviewing Klansman Arthur Leonard Spencer in 2010

  FOREWORD

  I DEDICATED my novel Natchez Burning thus: “To Stanley Nelson, a humble hero.” I don’t use that term lightly. Heroes abound in novels, but in the real world they are rare indeed. For most of us, it takes all our resources merely to lead a decent life and get the bills paid. But there is a special minority of persons who go beyond that—sometimes far beyond, into the realm of true heroism.

  I’m not talking about lightning acts of courage in battle. Such bravery certainly qualifies as heroism and often costs soldiers their health or even their lives. But it’s the willingness to sacrifice oneself in a just cause that ennobles bravery. And no cause was ever more just than the one to which Stanley Nelson has thus far given eight years of his life. Nor was any cause ever more selflessly pursued by a man who seemed to have no personal stake in it than Stanley’s investigation into the Silver Dollar Group murders in Mississippi and Louisiana in the 1960s. This selfless dedication is what prompted me to model a character after Stanley Nelson.

  Stanley is a gifted reporter, but he doesn’t work for the New York Times or the Washington Post. He works for the Concordia Sentinel, a newspaper with 4,700 subscribers, based in Ferriday, Louisiana, a tiny farming town only a few miles from the Mississippi River. He has no pool of researchers or stringers on w
hom to call, no fat expense budget to exploit in his investigations, no battery of attorneys to protect him. Yet despite this lack of material resources, Stanley Nelson took up a group of civil rights cases so cold they could have chilled an industrial deep freeze and made them so hot that the FBI felt the burn. That’s right—the chief law enforcement agency of the federal government had to scramble to play catch-up behind this one-man investigative juggernaut.

  What does it take to accomplish such a feat? Empathy, for one thing. The ability to understand what it means to have lost a son, a brother, or a parent to cruel and senseless murder. Stanley Nelson put himself in the shoes—and the hearts—of people who for decades had no real recourse to the law because the lawmen in their town were among their loved ones’ killers. But empathy alone wasn’t enough. Several FBI agents in the 1960s deeply felt the suffering of those victimized families. To solve their cases, however, required the ability to inspire trust in African Americans who had been given damned little reason to trust whites since the time of slavery. Stanley has this gift, and he has used it with great effect. Finally, success required determination—the stubbornness and stick-to-your-guns fortitude that make rural southerners the kind of foot soldiers military officers love. Stanley also has that quality in spades.

  Few people in his hometown thanked him for it. People don’t like writers dredging up the past in New England or New York, but in Louisiana and Mississippi, turning over old stones can get you killed in a hurry. At the very least, it brands you a “race traitor” to more than a few people you see every day on the street or in the next pew at church. But no matter what the naysayers did or threatened to do, Stanley plodded doggedly forward. He followed every lead, no matter where it led, and confronted every witness and suspect he could corner, no matter how dangerous the encounter. His ultimate quarry was the most violent splinter cell of the Ku Klux Klan ever birthed in America, the Silver Dollar Group, yet he never once let fear slow him down. Even so, the most remarkable thing about Stanley’s work was what drove him onward year after year, something so simple that I didn’t quite see it for a long time. You see, Stanley’s motive and his object were always one and the same.

  Justice.

  Stanley didn’t go on this seemingly quixotic quest to gain money, or fame, or any kind of advancement. He did it because he couldn’t bear the spiritual imbalance created in his hometown—and in America—by murder victims being abandoned by the justice system, and by their families being condemned to perpetual pain and grief. Stanley saw a wrong that needed righting, and since the authorities charged with redressing it had made clear that they had no real intention of doing so, he stepped into the breach and went to work.

  What most inspires me about Stanley’s solitary crusade is that the murder victims he sought to do right by were not celebrated leaders of the civil rights movement. They were just regular folks—a shoe repairman, a factory worker, a busboy—who wanted to improve the quality of life for their friends and neighbors. They were the salt of the earth, though they were not the color of salt, and Ferriday and Natchez were lesser places after they were gone. But thanks to Stanley’s work, a hidden circle of American survivors bound only by shared losses to violent racism has seen the veil that concealed the killers of their loved ones lifted, and truth exposed in all its clarifying light.

  Thanks to one dedicated reporter, the secrets of the Silver Dollar Group have been plumbed, and their evil set down between the covers of this book for you to try to understand. Some readers may shudder during this harrowing journey, but the path to truth and enlightenment is seldom easy. If Stanley could stand to listen to shattered relatives and cold-blooded killers tell him their long-held stories, then surely we can bear to read and learn from the secret history revealed as a result of his labors. Take comfort in the fact that the tale you are about to read is ultimately uplifting: Stanley Nelson raised his pen against the sword of hatred, and as a result, one bend of the Mississippi River looks a lot less dark than it once did.

  Stanley Nelson gives me hope for the South, and for America.

  —Greg Iles

  November 23, 2015

  Natchez, Mississippi

  PREFACE

  MY FIRST STORY on the Frank Morris arson murder was published on the front page of the Concordia Sentinel in Ferriday, Louisiana, on February 28, 2007. My boss, Lesley Hanna-Capdepon, had learned the day before that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was taking a second look at a number of civil rights–era murders, including that of a Ferriday man, Morris. I had never heard of Morris, although I was born in Ferriday in 1955, a time when his shoe shop was thriving. His business served the town’s black and white communities well for many years. Ferriday was a poor town, and most people there did not have closets filled with shoes. Parents depended on Morris to keep their children’s shoes in good repair for as long as possible. Nevertheless, in 1964, Klansmen torched his business. Morris attempted to escape the conflagration through the front door, but his assailants forced him at gunpoint back inside the shop. By the time he emerged from the rear, he was naked, bleeding, and dying. His life ended four days later.

  I grew up sixteen miles away in Catahoula Parish. My parents worked and shopped in Ferriday. On numerous occasions, my brother and I tagged along for haircuts and trips to the grocery store. My daddy was a farmer and plumber. In 1950 Mama was a graduate of Ferriday High, where Concordia Parish sheriff Noah Cross’s wife, Iola, taught English. Like hundreds of other students, Mama loved Miss Iola, who was also a poet. Sometimes she’d read her poems at the end of class. My mother’s younger schoolmate Jerry Lee Lewis wasn’t a music legend yet, though she remembers that at almost every recess and lunch hour he’d play the piano in the school auditorium.

  Later, Mama worked as a nurse at the Concordia Parish Health Unit. In 1961, during a local drive encouraging residents to get their polio booster, she was pictured in the Concordia Sentinel several times, giving shots to the mayor, the publisher of the newspaper, local businessmen, and others. I did a double take when I found her on page 8 of the April 14, 1961, issue, giving a shot to Concordia Parish sheriff’s deputy Frank DeLaughter. A brutal man, he served time, along with Sheriff Cross, in federal prison in the 1970s. The deputy, I would learn in the years ahead, was a suspect in the Frank Morris arson and at least one other unsolved cold-case murder. I would also learn that the FBI considered Sheriff Cross and some of his deputies among the most corrupt in the South.

  A press release from the Department of Justice in 2007 announced that the department had partnered with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Urban League, and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) “to investigate several aging unsolved violent crimes from the Civil Rights era.” The announcement came in the wake of the FBI’s arrest of James Ford Seale, a seventy-one-year-old former Klansman who, with others, had savagely beaten and killed two black Mississippi teens in 1964. FBI director Robert Mueller pledged that the bureau would “do every­thing we can to close those cases and to close this dark chapter in our nation’s history.” From the SPLC, I received by fax 150 pages of heavily redacted FBI documents concerning the Morris case. I read them quickly and wrote a story two hours later. I was fascinated by the murder case but figured this story would be the only one.

  A few days later, Rosa Williams called. She had been twelve years old when her grandfather, Frank Morris, was murdered in 1964. Someone had sent a copy of the paper to her in Las Vegas, where she had moved years after the arson. She thanked me for writing about the murder, explaining that she had always wanted to know who killed her grandfather and why. For decades she prayed for justice and for truth, but she bore her frustration and pain silently, rarely mentioning it to anyone. Rosa told me that she had learned more about the case from the Sentinel story (764 words) than she had in the previous forty-three years. Never had any law enforcement agency—federal, state, or local—talked to her about the killing. Her grandfather had been forg
otten. She was grateful Morris’s name was on the FBI list, and she was hungry for answers.

  My thoughts turned to an autumn night in my youth in the early 1970s when, after a football game, I came upon a gruesome scene on the highway. An intoxicated man had plowed his car into a Volkswagen Beetle, killing a young family, including a six-year-old girl. The child and her parents were trapped inside the flaming car. No one could get them out. It was awful. I thought about Frank Morris and wondered: What kind of man would purposely set another on fire? What had the moment been like for Morris when he confronted his killers? What led those men to commit such a heinous act? I put myself in Rosa Williams’s shoes. How would I feel had that been my grandfather? Despite the racial divide, why wasn’t Ferriday or nearby Natchez, or the state of Louisiana for that matter, outraged by this crime? Why hasn’t anyone done anything about it? Who else has been forgotten?

  I called Rosa. I promised her I would do everything within my limited power to find out who killed her grandfather and why. Careful not to promise success, I pledged that I would stay in touch and share my findings. No longer would she be alone in the dark.

  I would go on to write 190 articles over seven years. There would be other cold cases, including some in Mississippi that had a Concordia connection. Not everyone was happy about my reporting. There were nasty calls and ugly letters and e-mails. The newspaper office was broken into. Two straight mornings before dawn, while I was making my daily walk, a pickup emerged from the distance and flushed me off the road. Through the years, I interviewed aging Klansmen and witnesses in many places, including cornfields, cemeteries, churchyards, hospitals, and hotel rooms. I was cursed often but received decently by most.

  The 150 pages from the SPLC fueled a number of initial stories, and one led to another. The Sam Hanna family, owners of the Concordia Sentinel, a 4,700-circulation weekly founded after the Civil War by a former slave, gave me the green light to pursue the story. They stood behind me from beginning to end. In addition to following these investigations, I had to take care of my regular duties as editor, covering the school board, parish government, and town council, as well as writing about crime, court, and everything else, including a local history column.