NATION NOW

Louisiana journalist pursuing KKK killers across time

Jerry Mitchell
The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger
Stanley Nelson, author of "Devils Walking: Klan Murders alone the Mississippi in the 1960's" book. HANDOUT Photo by Rhett Powell [Via MerlinFTP Drop]

Stanley Nelson assumed that the first story he wrote about the 1964 killing of Frank Morris by the Ku Klux Klan would be the last.

But Nelson found himself drawn into the web of mysteries surrounding the murders of Morris and many others. Along the way, he uncovered the work of a secret KKK terrorist cell known as "the Silver Dollar Group."

Now, a decade later, the 61-year-old editor of The Concordia Sentinel in Ferriday, La., has written more than 400,000 words on the subject -- all while covering local government, the school board, the courthouse, crime, trials and the drainage commission, plus listening to complaints and editing the newspaper.

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"I've watched Stanley do it all while working both sides of the Mississippi River (on) nights and weekends to doggedly track down the truth behind unsolved and unpunished civil rights murders," says Hank Klibanoff, director of the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project at Emory University in Atlanta. "He's a journalistic phenomenon."

In 2011, the Pulitzer Prize committee noticed his work and made him a finalist. Best-selling author Greg Iles based his trilogy of novels, starting with Natchez Burning, on the reporting.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH TAB Frank Morris shoe shop circa early 1950s. HANDOUT CREDIT: William Brown, Concordia Sentinel [Via MerlinFTP Drop]

"Stanley Nelson picked up the torch that was dropped all those years ago and continued the search for justice," Iles says. "That's true heroism."

In October, LSU Press published Nelson's book, Devils Walking, about nine KKK killings along the Mississippi River that went unpunished in the 1960s.

Frank Morris was a 51-year-old black businessman in Ferriday who ran a shoe shop and repair store, where he served both black and white customers.

After a false KKK rumor that he had flirted with a white woman, the Silver Dollar Gang set his store on fire on Dec. 10, 1964. He was sleeping in back.

When he tried to escape out the front door, a gang member with a shotgun forced him back inside, snarling, "Get back in there, n-----!"

Morris died of severe burns at a hospital four days later.

Although Nelson had grown up in the area, he had never heard of Morris until 2007, when the FBI included his case on a list of 100 unsolved murders from the civil rights era that it would be re-examining. He wrote about the case.

After that first story appeared, Morris' granddaughter, Rosa Williams, who was 12 at the time, telephoned.

"She told me, 'All of my life I have wanted to know what happened to my grandfather. I've learned more in your story than I've known all my life. I've never gone a day without thinking about my grandfather,'" he recalls.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH TAB Rubble of the Frank Morris shoe shop hours after arson, Dec., 10, 1964: HANDOUT Credit: Father August Thompson, Concordia Sentinel [Via MerlinFTP Drop]

In 2010, Nelson tracked down three witnesses who told him a man named Arthur Leonard Spencer had acknowledged involvement in the attack but claimed he and fellow Klansmen didn't mean to kill Morris.

The FBI talked to the witnesses, but concluded they were lying.

Nelson disagreed.

In his book, he traced the fatal fire from Spencer to Concordia Parish sheriff's deputy Frank DeLaughter, identifying him as the one who masterminded the fire to avenge an argument he had with Morris after DeLaughter refused to pay Morris for a pair of cowboy boots and for shoe repair work.

"If today's bureau had not ignored their own retired agents and instead sought their assistance, justice may have prevailed for Frank Morris," Nelson says.

This is a low resolution image "Devils Walking: Klan Murders along the Mississippi in the 1960's" book by Stanley Nelson. HANDOUT [Via MerlinFTP Drop]

The FBI believed the Silver Dollar Group was also behind the 1964 disappearance of Joe Edwards, who worked at the Shamrock Motel where Klansmen regularly gathered, and the 1965 bomb attack on Natchez, Miss., NAACP leader George Metcalfe, who survived.

Nelson also saw their fingerprints on the 1964 ambush killing of Clifton Walker near Woodville, Miss., and dozens of beatings and burnings on both sides of the river.

The Silver Dollar Group aimed to trigger a race war, Nelson says. "They were going to fight to the death."

Over the past decade, the FBI has closed all but seven of the 100 cases.

Nelson remains determined to pursue the mysteries that remain, including the disappearance of Edwards.

Nelson hopes to find his body. "I want to do that for the family," he says. "It's the only (civil rights cold) case I know of where the body was never found."