
          Guilty as Charged
          By Davenport, ElaineElaine Davenport
          Vol. 16, No. 1, 1994, pp. 8-11
          
          In closing arguments at the January 27-February 5 trial of Byron de
la Beckwith for the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers, Hinds County,
Mississippi Assistant District Attorney Bobby DeLaughter asked the
jury, "Is it ever too late to do the right thing?" The jury's answer
was "Guilty as Charged."
          Like many events in this case, the unanimous verdict did not come
quickly. It was read after five hours of 8-4 deadlock the first
afternoon, an evening of sequestration at Jackson's Edison Walthall
Hotel, and more than an hour of deliberation the next morning—during
which the jury foreman, the Rev. Elvage Fondren, 70, led a prayer
session to help resolve the jury's disagreement.
          The pace of the Evers case has been both as slow and as sure as the
pace of change in the South. More than thirty years have passed since
Beckwith hid in a thicket of honeysuckle near the Evers home in
Jackson on June 12, 1963, and shot the Mississippi State NAACP leader
in the back as he got out of his car in his driveway. Evers led the
struggle for better employment and housing for black residents, equal
voting_rights, and desegregation of schools, libraries, and other
public facilities. Beckwith was tried twice in 1964 for the murder,
and twice all-white, all-male juries deadlocked. Charges against him
were dropped in 1969.
          The next phase of the case came in the 1990s, when Mississippi had
more elected black officials than any state. Beckwith and others had
not changed their white supremacist views, but there had been a vast
change in the law and the attitude of most of society since the
1960s. New evidence came to the attention of DeLaughter, assistant
Hinds County prosecutor, who, at 35, was young enough to wonder why
the case had never been solved.
          A grand jury reindicted Beckwith for the Evers murder in December
1990. But Beckwith fought extradition from his home in Tennessee for
ten months, then delayed the trial for more than two years with
motions alleging violation of his constitutional rights of due process
and a speedy trial. The old status quo seemed to be digging in its
heels. Evers' widow Myrlie said she began to despair that the trial
would ever take place.
          But it did, and the change in social attitudes that thirty years
had brought was the biggest factor in the 1994 verdict. The jury this
time was not all-male and all-white, but made up of seven women (five
black) and five men (three black). Little new evidence was presented;
in fact, crucial evidence including the bullet that killed Evers was
missing this time. The prosecution had managed to round up the Enfield
rifle, the telescopic sight with Beckwith's fingerprint on it, and a
transcript, all from the 1964 trials. Many of the same witnesses
testified. And stand-ins read the words of witnesses who could not be
found or who had died.
          The scant new evidence there was added only circumstantial proof
of the murder. Six witnesses testified that Beckwith had bragged to
them about killing Evers (see New Witnesses, page 10). An enlargement
of a picture that had been evidence in 1964 also was presented. The
picture was of Beckwith's white Plymouth Valiant. The area near the
rearview mirror had been enhanced, using modern methods, to reveal a
Masonic emblem hanging there, thus matching Beckwith's car with one a
witness had seen in a parking lot near the murder scene.
          Mrs. Evers said she had been told "every reason why we could not
pursue a third trial," but kept pushing, nonetheless. She said at a
press conference after the trial that whatever the verdict, the trial
was a victory in itself. "Perhaps Medgar did more in death than he
could have in life.... He lives through all of us."
          As the Evers case began to move through the courts, the idea
became more firmly planted that other murder cases from the Civil
Rights era might be brought to justice. A precedent had been set in
1977 with the successful reopening of the 1963 Birmingham church
bombing case, in which four girls attending Sunday school had been
killed. Klansman Robert Chambliss was convicted of first-degree murder
in that case. But, despite an eyewitness account of four white_men
planting the bomb, no one else has ever been charged.
          National NAACP leader William Gibson, who attended the Evers
trial February 2 in Jackson, called on the Department of Justice to
investigate unsolved civil_rights atrocities in the same way its
Office of Special Investigation looks for Nazi war criminals. The call
to reopen or investigate cases has come from every quarter,
even



given that evidence may have disappeared and memories may have
faded. "If you can ever solve a murder case, you should be able to
prosecute it," said Bill Baxley, the former Alabama attorney general
who was responsible for reopening the Birmingham church bombing case.
          There are many unresolved cases. Some of them cry out for justice
because either the killer, like Beckwith, has bragged about the crime,
or because the murder was witnessed but a case never brought. Carved
into the black granite of the Civil Rights Memorial in front of the
Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery are the names of forty
persons who died in the civil_rights struggle. Most of those deaths
remain unsolved. The Civil Rights Research and Documentation Project,
formerly at Ole Miss but now directed from Boston by Dr. Ronald
Bailey, has found that between 1889 and 1940, "almost 3,100 Black
people were lynched in the U.S., mostly in poor rural areas of the
South."
          A highly visible stride has been made with the Evers case. And at
least two other cases from the same decade now have been
reopened. They are:
          
          VERNON DAHMER A well-off businessman and local NAACP president,
Dahmer died in January 1966 after Klansmen shot at and firebombed his
home near Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He had offered to pay poll taxes
for those who could not afford the fee to vote. President Lyndon
Johnson ordered an FBI investigation and fourteen Klansmen were
charged with arson and murder. Only three were convicted of murder and
sentenced to life in prison. Sam Bowers, then the Imperial Wizard of
the local White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, known as the most violent
Klan group in the South, was tried twice and twice the jury deadlocked
11-1 in favor of conviction. Glenn White, Forrest County District
Attorney, has searched for transcripts of the Bowers trials, hired an
investigator, and is considering reopening the case. "It's never too
late," says Dahmer's son Dennis, echoing the words of Assistant
District Attorney DeLaughter in the Evers case.
          
          ONEAL MOORE was shot in the head June 2, 1965, by nightriders in
Varnado, Louisiana, and died instantly. He and his partner were the
first black deputies in the sheriff's department of Washington Parish,
known to have one of the largest Klan memberships per capita in



the country. Police arrested Ernest Ray McElveen, who belonged to
several segregationist groups, but charges were dismissed and the
murder never solved. The FBI has reopened the case, which was the
subject of an episode of the television program "Unsolved Mysteries"
several years ago.
          
          Other cases, both well-known and obscure, beg for justice:
          
          MICHAEL SCHWERNER, JAMES CHANEY, and ANDREW GOODMAN. These young
civil_rights workers were investigating a fire at the Mount Zion
Methodist Church in Neshoba County, Mississippi, where they were soon
to conduct a Freedom School. On June 21, 1964, they were arrested and
held in jail in Philadelphia, Mississippi, then released at 10
p.m. and intercepted by Klansmen. They were shot and their bodies
buried in an earthen dam. Imperial Wizard Bowers (who figured in the
Dahmer case), Neshoba County Chief Deputy Cecil Price, and six other
Klansmen were convicted of a federal charge of conspiracy to deprive
the three young volunteers of their civil_rights. But the state has
never brought murder charges.
          
          EMMETT TILL. The murder of this black 14-year-old on August 28,
1955, was the subject of an article in Look magazine, in which
J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant said they beat the youth, shot him in the
head, wired a 75-pound cotton gin fan to his neck and dumped his body
in the Tallahatchie River. A Chicago resident, Till was in Money,
Mississippi for the summer and had dared to whistle at Bryant's
wife. Milam and Bryant were tried and found not guilty by an allmale,
all-white jury who deliberated just



over one hour. The case is
considered pivotal because such an outrageous act against a young
person made Till a symbol of the struggle for equality and galvanized
the early civil_rights movement. Evers, who had become the first NAACP
Field Secretary in Mississippi in 1954, investigated the murder and
attended the trial. Milam is now dead. Bryant is still alive, but
having been acquitted once of the murder, cannot be tried again for
the same offense.
          
          LAMAR SMITH. On August 13, 1955, Smith went to the Lincoln County
courthouse in Brookhaven, Mississippi, as part of his energetic
campaign to organize black_voters. He was shot as he stood on the
courthouse lawn arguing with several white_men. No one would testify
as to what many had witnessed, and the three men arrested for murder
went free. The grand jury's report said that "although it was
generally known or alleged to be known who the parties were in the
shooting, yet people standing within twenty or thirty feet at the time
claim to know nothing about it."
          
          Just as the end of the Nazi atrocities against Jews did not mean
the end of anti-Semitism, one guilty verdict in an old civil_rights
murder case does not mean the end of bigotry.
          But reopening the Evers case did bring some gains. District
Attorney Ed Peters summed up the case: "A bragging murderer has been
convicted." Mrs. Evers saw the verdict as a way to "cleanse the state
as it has our family." And she reminded those who are still alive with
a murder on their conscience to "always look over their shoulder
because there may be someone like me and my family who will push to
see that justice is done and never give up."
          
            Free-lance journalist and Southern_Changes contributing
editor Elaine Davenport is the associate producer of an upcoming HBO
documentary on Medgar Evers.
          
        
