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WORK TITLE: Devils Walking : Klan Murders along the Mississippi in the 1960s
WORK NOTES: also listed as Devil’s-a-Walkin’
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 9/18/1955
WEBSITE:
CITY: Ferriday
STATE: LA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://lsupress.org/books/detail/devils-walking/ * http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2014/04/26/small-town-editor-compelled-solve-mystery/8235145/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born September 18, 1955, in Ferriday, LA.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and editor. Concordia Sentinel, Ferriday, LA, editor.
AWARDS:Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism, University of Oregon; Courage and Justice Award, Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University; Gish Award, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Stanley Nelson is a writer and the long-time editor of the Concordia Sentinel in the small town of Ferriday, Louisiana, where he was born. His work has been recognized with honors, including the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism from the University of Oregon, the Courage and Justice Award from the Manship School of Mass Communication at the Louisiana State University, and the Gish Award from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky.
In 2016 Nelson released his first book, Devils Walking: Klan Murders along the Mississippi in the 1960s. The volume is also known as Devil’s-a-Walkin’: Klan Murders along the Mississippi in the 1960s. The book finds Nelson expanding on a series of articles he wrote in the Concordia Sentinel about eight unsolved murders of African American men from 1964 to 1967. One of the first to be killed was a shoe-shop owner named Frank Morris. In an interview with Jerry Mitchell, contributor to the online version of the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger, Nelson stated: “The rumor that he was flirting with white women simply wasn’t true. That was a rumor started by the Klan.” Nelson states that the murderers were members of the Silver Dollar Group, a militant offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. He criticizes potential witnesses, who did not speak up out of fear of the Silver Dollar Group. He told Mitchell: “You support somebody by your silence. … If you know something about a killer and you’re not sharing it, you’re supporting him.”
Reviews of Devils Walking were favorable. A Publishers Weekly contributor suggested that the book featured a “meticulous narrative.” The same contributor concluded: “By bringing these stories to light he has made a great contribution to righting a historical wrong.” Jim Ewing, a critic on the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger Web site, remarked: “Devils brings Nelson’s reporting to its finest conclusion, adding perspective and filling in gaps in the stories he wrote.” Writing for the online version of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Curt Holman commented: “At a time of charged discussions over race in America, particularly involving law enforcement, Devils Walking articulates how high a level of violence and bigotry used to be tolerated in parts of the South. The book can be partially reassuring at how much things have improved, but also serves as a cautionary tale, with some of the racists’ rhetoric resonating uncomfortably with current events. Depending on your perspective, the Klan murders of the 1960s can as remote as ancient history or as relevant as just a day ago.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, August 22, 2016, review of Devils Walking: Klan Murders along the Mississippi in the 1960s, p. 102.
ONLINE
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Online, http://www.myajc.com/ (January 6, 2017), Curt Holman, review of Devils Walking.
Clarion-Ledger Online (Jackson MS), http://www.clarionledger.com/ (April 27, 2014), Jerry Mitchell, author interview; (December 11, 2016), Jim Ewing, review of Devils Walking.
Country Roads Online, http://countryroadsmagazine.com/ (October 20, 2016), Nalini Raghavan, review of Devils Walking.*
QUOTED: "The rumor that he was flirting with white women simply wasn't true. That was a rumor started by the Klan."
"You support somebody by your silence. ... If you know something about a killer and you're not sharing it, you're supporting him."
Small-town editor compelled to solve mystery
The Clarion-Ledger Published 9:27 p.m. CT April 26, 2014 | Updated 1:12 p.m. CT April 27, 2014
Editor pens more than 200 stories on cold case to solve civil rights slaying.
photo 1.JPG
(Photo: Jerry Mitchell/The Clarion-Ledger)
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FERRIDAY, La. – Stanley Nelson had no intention of writing more than one story about the 1964 killing of Frank Morris when he first learned of it in 2007.
But the past has a way of invading the present, and Nelson found himself drawn into a mystery he felt compelled to solve.
More than 200 stories later, the 58-year-old editor of The Concordia Sentinel has been named a Pulitzer Prize finalist and is depicted fictionally in Greg Iles' new novel, "Natchez Burning."
Nelson is flattered Iles would base a character on him, but confesses he shares little in common with his alter ego, journalist Henry Sexton. "He has had a much more adventurous life than me," he said. "He is a musician, has a girlfriend and is tech savvy — that's something I don't know a damn thing about."
Nelson was born in this town of 3,500 with its notorious past and struggling present.
By the time the Civil War began in 1861, Concordia Parish had 13,000 slaves and 1,000 white residents, most of them overseers and their families at plantations.
A half-century later, Ferriday looked to sawmills and railroads for economic salvation.
The town was still reeling from the Depression when Morris opened a shoe shop in the late 1930s.
People from both sides of Louisiana Avenue, the dividing line between the black and white communities here, came to Morris' shoe shop.
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"A lot of families could only afford a single pair of shoes for their kids," Nelson said. "Frank Morris was the one who fixed them."
The 51-year-old Morris brought the repaired shoes outside to his white, female customers, Nelson said. "The rumor that he was flirting with white women simply wasn't true. That was a rumor started by the Klan."
The shoe shop man was asleep on a cot in the back of his store when he heard glass breaking just after midnight on Dec. 10, 1964.
He bolted to the front of the store and saw two men, one pouring gasoline on the outside of the building and the other holding a shotgun.
"Hey," Morris yelled. "Stop that!"
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Real-Life KKK Killing That Inspired Greg Iles' New Novel, Natchez Burning
A flaming match fell into the gasoline, and the building exploded into an inferno. Morris tried to escape out the front door — only to run into the shotgun and the man behind it yelling, "Get back in there, n-----!"
By the time Morris made it out the back, his feet were bleeding, his hair was on fire, and all that remained of his clothing were the waistband of his boxer shorts and the shoulder straps of his undershirt. They were smoldering.
Morris survived long enough to speak to the FBI, telling agents he didn't know his attackers, but friends wondered if he had been afraid to say.
On Feb. 28, 2007, Nelson heard Morris' name for the first time. The Justice Department had released it on a list of victims' names from unpunished killings during the civil rights era.
Within two hours, he had written his first story, believing that would be his last.
But more information came his way and so did a telephone call from Morris' granddaughter, Rosa Williams. She shared the story of how she had been 12 when he died.
She thanked him for his articles and told him she had learned more from him than anything before about her grandfather's death.
Nelson could hear her pain and thought of the time in high school when he was riding on a school bus back from a football game and saw smoke pouring from a smashed Volkswagen Beetle. Fire had engulfed the family inside.
A little girl had stood on the back seat, trying to escape. Workers tried desperately to rescue her and her parents, but the flames had proved too intense.
The nightmare he witnessed began to recur in his mind as he dug deeper into the Morris killing. How could one human hate another so much that he set him on fire?
In the 1960s, the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi were the most violent white supremacist group in the U.S., responsible for dozens of beatings, bombings and killings, many of those in southwest Mississippi, while the Original Knights of the KKK terrorized Louisiana.
But a handful of Klansmen felt they were spending too much time with public parades, rather than in private violence.
Those violent believers formed a terrorist cell known as the Silver Dollar Group (depicted in "Natchez Burning" as the Double Eagles).
About 20 Klansmen joined the underground cell, and their leader, Red Glover, handed each a silver dollar, most minted in their birth years, as proof of membership.
In his investigation, aided by the Cold Case Justice Initiative at Syracuse University's College of Law, LSU journalism students and others, Nelson discovered the Silver Dollar Group had killed at least five people on both sides of the Mississippi River.
Those slayings included Morris (depicted in "Natchez Burning" as that of musician Albert Norris); the 1964 killings of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, who were beaten in the Homochitto National Forest and drowned in an old part of the Mississippi River; the 1965 beating death of Earl Hodges in Franklin County; and the 1967 bombing of Wharlest Jackson in Natchez.
And that was hardly all their violence, Nelson found.
The FBI believed the Silver Dollar Group had been behind the disappearance of Joe Edwards, who vanished on July 12, 1964 — only to have his 1958 Buick mysteriously reappear near the town's bowling alley. Agents also believed the group in 1965 had bombed Natchez NAACP leader George Metcalfe, who miraculously survived.
Nelson believed the terrorist cell could have been behind the KKK's 1964 killing of Clifton Walker near Woodville, the April 1964 attempted killing of Richard Joe Butler of Adams County and dozens of beatings and burnings on both sides of the river.
The Silver Dollar Group carried out this violence in belief a race war would ensue, he said. "They were going to fight to the death."
In 1967, an FBI informant identified four men as being involved in Morris' killing, but the more Nelson investigated, the more that story seemed to fall apart.
He dug deeper, even as he continued covering the school board, the police jury, the courthouse, crime, trials and the local drainage commission.
Robert Rosenthal, who heads the San Francisco-based Center for Investigative Reporting, has worked with many great journalists over his career and ranks working with Nelson as one of the best.
"Stanley is one of my heroes," he said. "He combines tenacity, courage and a special level of integrity that make me proud to be associated with him."
Iles said the idea of a lone journalist at a small newspaper outpacing the FBI in his investigations inspired the character of Henry Sexton.
"Stanley Nelson picked up the torch that was dropped all those years ago and continued the search for justice," he said. "That's true heroism."
Some readers of The Concordia Sentinel were far from happy with Nelson's investigations, but the editor said the Hanna family, owners of the newspaper, stood behind him.
He received threats, and their building became a target of hate. "I've been cursed and called more creative things than I thought were possible," he said.
One angry caller questioned why he was doing this.
"I'm trying to solve a murder," he replied.
"You can't do that — you're just a reporter," the caller said before slamming the phone down.
Nelson vowed to the family that he would see the story through. "If the local newspaper doesn't do this work," he asked, "who will?"
A few days before Morris' killing, Concordia Parish Deputy Frank DeLaughter remarked about him, that "n----- isn't acting right," Nelson said.
The deputy was angry with Morris, who insisted on being paid for repairing the officer's boots, he said. "Frank Morris had the audacity to stand up to him."
DeLaughter, a Klansman convicted of police brutality, has since died.
In 2010, Nelson tracked down three witnesses who told him Arthur Leonard Spencer had acknowledged involvement in Morris' attack but claimed he and fellow Klansmen didn't mean to kill the shoe shop operator.
The FBI talked to the witnesses, but rejected their statements, concluding they were lying or their words didn't match the evidence.
Spencer died last year.
In January, Paige Fitzgerald, deputy chief in charge of the Justice Department's Cold Case Initiative, wrote Morris' granddaughter: "The investigation has produced no credible evidence implicating anyone who could currently be prosecuted. We have no choice but to close our investigation."
Nelson hasn't given up. He said there are at least three Silver Dollar Group members still alive.
He believes they and others know something about the Silver Dollar Group's killings of Morris and others — and have yet to share what they know.
He quoted from Proverbs: "A man who is laden with the guilt of human blood will be a fugitive until death; let no one support him."
For Nelson, that means "you support somebody by your silence," he said. "If you know something about a killer and you're not sharing it, you're supporting him."
To contact Jerry Mitchell, call (601) 961-7064 or follow @jmitchellnews on Twitter.
The investigative work ofConcordia Sentinel editor Stanley Nelson made him a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting and has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and on CNN and NPR. Winner of the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism from the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication, among many other honors, Nelson was one of seven reporters featured in the Columbia Journalism Review’s 50th anniversary issue, “The Art of Great Reporting.”
For 10 years, Stanley Nelson, as editor of the Concordia Sentinel weekly in Ferriday, Louisiana, investigated eight murders committed by the Ku Klux Klan in southwest Mississippi and northeastern Louisiana. His investigation began with the December 1964 murder of Ferriday shoe shop owner Frank Morris, an African-American whose shop was set ablaze by Klansmen while he was still inside. Morris died four days after the arson.
The FBI investigated in the 1960s but the case went cold. In 2007, the bureau reopened the case. In January 2011, Nelson in the Concordia Sentinel identified a suspect in the Morris arson. In February 2011, a Concordia Parish Grand Jury initiated a probe into the murder. The suspect died before any action was taken.
During the course of his work, Nelson identified the members and actions of the most secretive Klan cell ever known in America – the Silver Dollar Group, whose members vowed to fight integration and the government with violence. In his book Devils Walking, Nelson links the Silver Dollar Group to a series of murders, arsons and beatings.
He was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for his work on the Civil Rights-era cold cases in 2011. Nelson was cited "for his courageous and determined efforts to unravel a long forgotten Ku Klux Klan murder during the Civil Rights era."
Nelson was the recipient of the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism from University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication for demonstrating "an extraordinary commitment to ethical conduct, even when faced with economic, personal or political pressure."
He was also the first recipient of the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication’s Courage and Justice Award "for his commitment and courage in the pursuit of justice for Frank Morris of Ferriday."
Nelson was also the recipient of the Gish Award, presented by The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky.
His work has been featured in the New York Times, National Public Radio, Washington Post, CNN and by international news organizations. The Los Angeles Times wrote of Nelson’s work: “He gladdens the hearts of all journalists who still believe that one person with the right focus can change the world, if only a little.”
QUOTED: "meticulous narrative."
"By bringing these stories to light he has made a great contribution to righting a historical wrong."
Devil's-A-Walkin': Klan Murders Along the Mississippi in the 1960s
263.34 (Aug. 22, 2016): p102.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Devil's-A-Walkin': Klan Murders Along the Mississippi in the 1960s
Stanley Nelson. Louisiana State Univ., $29.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-8071-6407-5
Nelson, the editor of Louisiana's tiny Concordia Sentinel newspaper, uncovers the truth about a series of horrifying hate crimes that have been ignored for half a century. At the height of the civil rights movement, 15 Mississippian Klansmen, including a number of law enforcement officers, formed a violent vigilante organization named the Silver Dollar Group. Between 1964 and 1967, these men murdered eight African-American men in Adams County, Miss., and across the border in Concordia Parish, La., targeting those who seemed "militant" or overly familiar toward white women. FBI agents were assigned to investigate these killings but made no progress; many potential witnesses were afraid to testify, especially as a number of sheriffs and police officers were either Silver Dollar members or sympathetic to the group's actions. Nelson spent years investigating these long-cold murder cases, interviewing aging witnesses and perpetrators in an attempt to bring, if not justice, then at least closure to deaths that continue to haunt the victims' families--and, in some cases, their killers. Nelson ends his meticulous narrative on a haunting note, stating that "we all are" responsible for failures of justice such as these, but by bringing these stories to light he has made a great contribution to righting a historical wrong. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Devil's-A-Walkin': Klan Murders Along the Mississippi in the 1960s." Publishers Weekly, 22 Aug. 2016, p. 102. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA461609343&it=r&asid=cfd429f2b83f3b421d076bb4e94016b5. Accessed 10 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A461609343
QUOTED: "“Devils” brings Nelson's reporting to its finest conclusion, adding perspective and filling in gaps in the stories he wrote.
It includes photos, extensive notes, a detailed index and appendices so that it can be used as a text for future cold case work or add to the body of knowledge of civil rights abuses."
Book review: 'Devils Walking'
Jim Ewing, Special to USA TODAY NETWORK - Mississippi 10:32 a.m. CT Dec. 11, 2016
636166191639928349-Devils-Walking-Cover.jpg
(Photo: Special to The Clarion-Ledger)
Story Highlights
Stanley Nelson will sign copies of "Devils Walking," 1 p.m. Saturday, Turning Pages, Natchez
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If high-powered recommendations alone could make a book great, then “Devils Walking” by Stanley Nelson (LSU Press) would be a prize winner.
But for students of the civil rights movement in the South, Nelson's riveting reporting stands on its own for his investigations into Ku Klux Klan murders along the Mississippi River in the 1960s. The praise is deserved.
It doesn’t hurt that Greg Iles, a renowned novelist from Natchez, writes Nelson a glowing foreword to the book, or that Hank Klibanoff, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author on race, wrote an afterword praising Nelson’s work.
Iles, in fact, dedicated his novel “Natchez Burning” to Nelson for his dogged investigations and voluminous reporting.
“Devils” starts off innocuously enough, with Nelson recalling a press release crossing his desk — when he was editor of the tiny three-person Concordia (Louisiana) Sentinel — announcing the FBI’s reopening of a 1964 cold case. This relatively routine 2007 press release sparked Nelson’s interest and, in addition to his other myriad duties covering the local community, he started looking into it.
The result was 190 stories over seven years that outdid the FBI in unveiling a criminal enterprise in Concordia Parish, Natchez and nearby environs.
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Nelson’s reporting, which resulted in a Pulitzer Prize nomination, revealed the most secretive Klan group ever known, called the Silver Dollar Group, that was responsible for a reign of terror along both sides of the Mississippi River.
That reporting, as Iles notes in the foreword, provided plot material for his fictional “Natchez Burning,” book one in a trilogy about unsolved civil rights murders set in Natchez. (The second book is “The Bone Tree,” and the upcoming third book is “Mississippi Blood.”)
“Devils” reveals the facts and stories arising from Nelson's investigation that began with the murder of Frank Morris, a black man burned to death by the Klan. Nelson reveals that the secret Klan group included local police and sheriff’s deputies. That resulted in death threats to him and harrowing experiences but also prompted the group’s crimes to go before a grand jury for the first time, 50 years after their occurrence.
“Devils” is not merely a repeat of Nelson’s already published stories. He reconfigures his reporting into a new and comprehensive look at the KKK's activities in chronological order from 1964-67. Readers will be stunned by the depth, breadth and detail of these previously covered-up activities.
“Devils” is at times brutal in its subject matter, intrinsically compassionate toward the victims and unflinchingly honest about what transpired — the hallmarks of superlative journalism.
The horrendous nature of the crimes, revealed by Nelson’s unflinching diligence, hammers home the message that no murder should be forgotten or injustice ignored. It reaffirms faith in the idea that people of conscience and determination like Nelson can accomplish the seemingly impossible task of bringing light and justice to old crimes.
“Devils” brings Nelson's reporting to its finest conclusion, adding perspective and filling in gaps in the stories he wrote.
It includes photos, extensive notes, a detailed index and appendices so that it can be used as a text for future cold case work or add to the body of knowledge of civil rights abuses.
Klibanoff, who once covered the Capitol in Jackson for the Gulf Coast’s Sun Herald newspaper, now teaches at Emory University in Atlanta and said he uses Nelson as his model when teaching students how to do investigative journalism.
Klibanoff won the Pulitzer Prize for History for his book “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation.”
Nelson, with “Devils,” joins Klibanoff with an enduring piece of journalism chronicling a previously little known chapter of our region’s hate crimes.
Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at The Clarion-Ledger, is the author of seven books, including his latest, "Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them."
QUOTED: "At a time of charged discussions over race in America, particularly involving law enforcement, “Devils Walking” articulates how high a level of violence and bigotry used to be tolerated in parts of the South. The book can be partially reassuring at how much things have improved, but also serves as a cautionary tale, with some of the racists’ rhetoric resonating uncomfortably with current events. Depending on your perspective, the Klan murders of the 1960s can as remote as ancient history or as relevant as just a day ago."
‘Devils Walking’ a sprawling investigation of cold case Klan murders
living
By Curt Holman - For Cox Newspapers
0
“Devil’s Walking: Klan Murders along the Mississippi in the 1960s” by Stanley Nelson
Posted: 1:20 p.m. Friday, January 06, 2017
At 8:01 p.m. on Feb. 27, 1967, Wharlest Jackson clocked out of his job at the Armstrong Tire Plant of Natchez, Miss. Recently promoted to a position that had only been held by whites, Jackson drove from the parking lot in his green Chevrolet pick-up and, after a few blocks, switched on his left turn blinker.
Jackson died instantly when his car exploded in a blast that shattered the windows of nearby homes. An FBI investigation determined that a charge had been placed under the truck’s cab directly below the driver’s seat, with a blasting cap wired to the turn signal.
The death of Wharlest Jackson counts among multiple killings — by car bomb, arson, drowning and more — investigated in the book “Devils Walking: Klan Murders along the Mississippi in the 1960s.” The volume represents a massive undertaking by award-winning author Stanley Nelson, editor of The Concordia Sentinel, a small weekly newspaper in Ferriday, La. “Devils Walking” reflects Nelson’s reportage from 190 articles written over a seven-year period, primarily on “cold cases” of decades-old Klan violence in northeast Louisiana and Mississippi.
The book focuses closely on eight murders and other activities of “The Silver Dollar Group” (SDG) essentially a domestic terrorist cell of Klansmen disaffected with the larger white supremacist groups and dedicated to more lethal means of racial suppression. Leader Raleigh “Red” Glover, who gave recruits silver dollars as a symbol of their solidarity, comes across as a nasty piece of work who laughs whenever he tells a story about pouring salt over a victim’s bleeding wounds.
Glover worked at the same factory as Wharlest Jackson, but other SDG affiliates include members of local law enforcement, such as Frank DeLaughter, a Ferriday police offer known for favoring fire hoses and leather straps in beating prisoners. Such brutality proves both shocking and relatively minor by the standards of the bloody setting.
“Devils Walking” untangles the internal structures and petty infighting of rival Klan organizations of the day, with Nelson describing one group holding a trial (with 150 White Knights in attendance) over a member accused of violating his oath of secrecy. The Klansmen’s glorified language for themselves can be at odds with their humble surroundings, like the mention of a state meeting to elect a “grand dragon” held “at a shed in the woods.”
While Klan violence and the FBI efforts to control it take center stage, Nelson also provides concise, heartbreaking portraits of the slain. Some were civil rights advocates operating in dangerous hometowns: Wharlest Jackson worked with the Natchez NAACP. Others come across as citizens simply trying to negotiate their communities’ fraught color lines. Frank Morris sold shoes to black and white customers in Ferriday for three decades until the night he was fatally burned in his own shop.
The narrative mostly unfolds chronologically from 1964 to 1967, which provides context for simultaneous events taking place on the local, state and national levels, including successful civil rights activism and the legal maneuverings in Southern school desegregation. From the perspective of the present day, the murders seem like desperate attempts to stem the tide of history.
Nelson can provide vivid anecdotes about the book’s subjects, but he unspools so many narrative threads that it can become a challenge to keep track of which Klansman or G-Man connects to which case. Readers may need to make frequent reference to the photos and appendices to keep up. Sometimes it feels like Nelson has amassed enough raw material for a shelf of true crime books between “Devils Walking’s” covers.
For most of the book, Nelson writes in a spare, informative way that keeps the reporter “invisible” and avoids florid language or editorializing. Sometimes the reader needs no emotional guidance. When Nelson says that the FBI investigation of the Jackson bombing involved 180 agents and cost of $300,000 but led to no murder convictions, there’s an unavoidable sense of frustration at justice denied.
A mystique can surround accounts of cold case investigations, which offer a chance to disinter the past and redress historic wrongs. Yet such ambitions are likely to hit dead ends, given the difficulties of uncovering fresh evidence decades after the fact. The title “Devils Walking” has more than one meaning, suggesting both demons incarnate and guilty parties walking scot-free.
Some of the book’s most memorable moments come in its final chapters, when Nelson switches to first-person accounts of some of his recent investigations. His descriptions of personal interactions with aging sources and their families have an immediacy lacking from the book’s historic recreations. He also offers a direct critique of the FBI’s apparent inaction in some cases, one involving an elderly suspect who died before charges were filed. He finally gets to directly express some of his moral outrage kept implicit for hundreds of pages.
At a time of charged discussions over race in America, particularly involving law enforcement, “Devils Walking” articulates how high a level of violence and bigotry used to be tolerated in parts of the South. The book can be partially reassuring at how much things have improved, but also serves as a cautionary tale, with some of the racists’ rhetoric resonating uncomfortably with current events. Depending on your perspective, the Klan murders of the 1960s can as remote as ancient history or as relevant as just a day ago.
NONFICTION
‘Devils Walking: Klan Murders along the Mississippi in the 1960s’
By Stanley Nelson
Louisiana State University Press
$29.95, 280 pgs.
Devils Walking
A new book from Stanley Nelson on his investigations into Klan-related murders
by Nalini Raghavan
October 20, 2016
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Next month, Concordia Sentinel editor and Pulitzer Prize finalist Stanley Nelson will release his book, Devils Walking: Klan Murders Along the Mississippi in the 1960s. In the book, published by LSU Press, Nelson details his widely recognized investigative reporting on a series of Klan-related murders that occurred in or near his hometown of Ferriday, Louisiana.
During that tumultuous era, several African American men, ranging in age from 19 to 67, were murdered in Ferriday and Natchez, Mississippi. Nelson was prompted to begin his investigations into these murders when, in 2006, the FBI re-opened long-cold cases from the civil rights era and made public documents that had been shut up in archives for decades.
Thanks to hundreds of interviews conducted by Nelson with victims’ families, suspects, and community members, Nelson uncovered the workings of a gang of vigilantes called the Silver Dollar group. A violent, local offshoot of the Klan, this group was made up of individuals, including law enforcement officers, who did not think the Klan was acting aggressively enough in the face of the civil rights movement.
In his book, Nelson details the results of his reporting and the judicial aftermath, which included the first grand jury hearing for the fifty-year-old crimes. Look for the book at major booksellers in October. For more background on the murders, Nelson’s research, and the involvement of LSU journalists in the project, read “Cold Cases,” published in May 2015, at CountryRoadsMag.com.