A group from the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation has uncovered the decades-old warrant for the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham, the wife of one of 14-year-old Emmett Till’s murderers in 1955.
Former FBI agent Dale Killinger was the lead investigator in the bureau’s 2004 investigation of the crime. After a screening of documentarian Keith Beauchamp’s “The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till” at Southern University on June 20, 2022, Killinger acknowledged that the FBI had never even investigated the lynching of Emmett Till at all prior to 2004.
A group of Black community leaders founded the Deacons for Defense and Justice in Jonesboro, La., with the goal of protecting the Black community and fighting back against KKK violence.
Valerie Reaves, the Higginbottom family historian who lives in the Atlanta area, mourns not only the loss of Elwood, but an entire branch of her family, she said on April 2, 2022, in her speech at the dedication of a long-overdue lynching memorial in the county where at least seven documented lynchings occurred.
Warning: This piece contains graphic descriptions of race violence. NOXUBEE COUNTY, Miss.—Travonder Dixon-McCloud grew up in Macon, Miss., hearing about a local white mob killing
Black businessman and voting-rights activist Lamar Smith arrived at the Lincoln County Courthouse on Aug. 13, 1955, as dozens of people milled about on the lawn. Walking up to the steps on the north side of the courthouse carrying his ballots, Smith encountered three white men who blocked his entry. Soon, he was lying on the ground dying from a gunshot wound. No one would help him.
Brookhaven, Miss., native Dick Scruggs was 9 when white men killed Black farm owner Lamar “Ditney” Smith due to his political organizing and campaign. Now, Scruggs wants a marker on the courthouse lawn where Smith died.
Just over an hour into the speeches at Moss Hill, a shot rang out. It touched off four days of violence in which white vigilantes and local leaders murdered as many as 50 Black residents of Hinds County. Thus began the Clinton Massacre—terrorism that upended Hinds County and Mississippi. Here is the real story of what began on Sept. 4, 1875.
May 8, 2021, was the 70th anniversary of the electrocution of Willie McGee in Mississippi’s traveling electric chair, a grim milestone in the history of civil rights in Mississippi. All these years later, McGee’s family continues to mourn his life and confront the impact of the tragic and undoubtedly unjust circumstances surrounding his death.
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