News

James Ford Seale: A Re-Birth, of a Fashion

Now that the trial is going on, a bit of new media background on the declaration that Seale was dead has been added to the record. I just read a post on the Hungry Blues blog. He quotes a new article by John Fleming in the Anniston Star about the false reporting about Seale's greatly exaggerated death.

Day 8: Franklin County Editors, Past and Present

This morning, Judge Henry Wingate agreed to allow the government to show the jury a racial epithet-filled letter that James Ford Seale allegedly wrote to the Franklin Advocate on July 23, 1964—two and a half months after he is accused of abducting and helping kill Henry Dee and Charles Moore, and six days after then-Franklin Advocate Editor and Publisher David Webb was announced as the publicity director of the Americans for the Preservation of the White Race, a Natchez-based front organization for the Ku Klux Klan, according to Mississippi Sovereignty Commission files.

Council to Pay $50K in Ridgeway Fees?

Attorneys for Jackson police detectives Michael Recio and Marcus Wright are asking for $50,000 in compensation from the city, according to Councilman Leslie McLemore.

Steve Rozman

Steve Rozman, 66, is leading the charge for civic engagement and social responsibility at Tougaloo College, around the state and across the nation.

Fleming sets hearing on NSF fees

Day 5: Of Guns and Freedom

By his own admission in court on Tuesday, it was Charles Marcus Edwards who first fingered Henry Dee. The young man who lived near him had come back to Chicago and was wearing a black bandana around Franklin County. That was a sign of trouble to the members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Edwards' friends and adopted family.

JPS Board Chooses Bond Manager

After a month of legal and procedural battles, the Jackson Public School Board awarded management of $122 million of a $150 million bond to Preferred Management Group and California-based Jacobs Engineering at a special May 31 meeting. The project involves building new schools, renovating some existing schools and expanding others.

Parking Battle in Fondren

Businesses in Fondren are skirmishing over limited parking space in the area. Managers and owners of businesses in Fondren Corner say the owners of Lenny's Sub Shop, on the other side of Fondren Place, are cracking down on Fondren Corner patrons who use Lenny's parking.

Supreme Court Denies Green Motion

The Mississippi Supreme Court denied a motion from Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Tomie Green regarding sanctions against attorneys for Mayor Frank Melton, chief among them former Mayor Dale Danks.

City Directors Get Legal Training

The city of Jackson's department directors got legal training from State Auditor Phil Bryant's office yesterday.

Goodbye, Mrs. Chaney

It took 41 years, but Fannie Lee Chaney lived to see her home state mete out a degree of justice for the murder of her son, James Chaney, on Father's Day, 1964. She was born Fannie Lee Roberth on a farm in a community called Sand Flats near Meridian. She married Ben Chaney in 1940, had a daughter, Barbara, the next year, and then gave birth to James Earl Chaney on May 30, 1943, as recounted in the book "We Are Not Afraid."

Ladd: Why the Past Is Not Past

Read JFP Editor Donna's Ladd's cover essay this week about why Mississippians must continue "dredging up" the past—regardless of what the national, or local, media think about it.

Dredging Up the Past: Why Mississippians Must Tell Our Own Stories

It was warm under the mammoth magnolia tree on the north side of the Neshoba County Courthouse, just yards from where the Confederate soldier stood on his marble pedestal until a storm knocked him over and broke his arm off a few years back.

BREAKING: Ellis Hearing Officer Recuses

Charles McClelland recused himself as hearing officer from the Jackson Public Schools administrative termination hearing for Chastain Principal Michael Ellis this morning.

James Ford Seale Trial to Begin Wednesday

The federal kidnapping and conspiracy trial of former Klansman James Ford Seale is now set to begin Wednesday, May 30, with jury selection in a federal courtroom in Jackson. Seale is accused of kidnapping Charles Moore and Henry Dee, who were beaten and tortured by the Klan, and then dumped into an offshoot of the Mississippi River, prosecutors believe. The Jackson Free Press helped revive interest in the case in July 2005 by traveling back to Franklin County with Thomas Moore, the brother of Charles Moore, and a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. filmmaker, where the team discovered that Seale was still alive from two sources. That information helped convinced U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton to jumpstart the investigation, leading to indictments in January 2007. A full archive of the JFP's coverage of this case and other Klan activity in the area is available on the JFP's Road to Meadville blog. JFP reporters will be blogging daily about the trial on the same blog. The JFP's July 2005 original award-winning story about Moore's journey home, "I Want Justice, Too" is available here.

Council Majority Fears Illegal Transfers

A majority of the City Council held a press conference today explaining their recent votes of no confidence in City Attorney Sarah O'Reilly-Evans and to withhold pay from two city employees.

Ron Mills

If you've ever gotten frustrated spending 20 minutes of your lunch break looking for a parking spot in Fondren, then "Captain" Ron Mills is your man.

BREAKING: Board Rejects Firefighter Examination

The Mississippi State Minimum Standards Board voted down a critical exam for the city of Jackson's class of firefighters today, saying the city had broken a standard rule while administering the Candidate Physical Ability Test.

The Klansmen Bound: 43 Years Later, James Ford Seale Faces Justice

Photos by Matt Saldaña and Kate Medley

Shuffling behind a young black woman in an identical orange jumpsuit, James Ford Seale entered the fourth-floor courtroom of the James O. Eastland Federal Building in Jackson on Feb. 22 with shackles hanging loosely around his waist and ankles, and his hands cuffed in front of him. The 71-year-old retired cropduster from Roxie, Miss., wore thin wire glasses, orange sandals and thick white socks. The words "Madison County Jail" were printed across his slight, but well-postured back. He stood no taller than 5'8" and looked to weigh about 125 pounds, but he showed traces of his muscular past with a thick neck that recalled his open-collared mug shot from 1964—the year he was arrested and released weeks later for the murders of two black teenagers in Franklin County.

The Klansman Bound: The Crime

The last time Mazie Moore ever saw her boy, 19-year-old son Charles, he was standing in front of Dillon's gas station on Main Street in Meadville, trying to thumb a ride with his friend, Henry Dee, also 19. Mazie had gotten a ride to the doctor and figured she would pick them up when she came back by there.

JPS Board Stalls on ‘Larkin-Gate' Contract

Members of the Jackson Public School board and City Council are delaying crucial votes in connection with a contract dispute over the school board's $150 million bond.

Non-White Population Grows in Mississippi

The Commercial Appeal is reporting:

Families to Replace Marker for Dee, Moore

Over at MississippiPolitical.com, C.W. is reporting about a memorial service to be held in Meadville on Memorial Day. The families of Henry Dee and Charles Moore will replace the memorial that Thomas Moore originally put up there on our original trip in July 2005, then had replaced a few months later after it was torn down (which Kate Medley and I covered and helped facilitate on Thomas' behalf then). That sign was torn down in January 2007 after the indictments were announced.

Judge Denies Contractor on School Bond

Hinds County Chancery Court Judge Denise Owens denied a motion for a temporary restraining order against the Jackson Public School District this afternoon. Jackson business Integrated Management Services PA filed the order yesterday, trying to halt a Monday JPS board meeting. The board is likely to choose an IMS competitor to manage its $150 million bond at that meeting.

JFP Chick Ball Raises $7,000 for Domestic Abuse Victims

A preliminary count shows that the 3rd annual JFP Chick Ball raised just over $7,000 for the Center for Violence Prevention in Pearl. This amount was raised through direct donations, a $5 cover charge, $5 raffle tickets for 25 door-prize packages donated by local businesses, the sale of t-shirts purchased by the Jackson alumni chapter of Delta Sigma Theater sorority and a silent auction of art by dozens of artists and prize packages donated by businesses. Those prizes included diamond earrings donated by Carter Jewelers. The amount raised surpassed the total of the first two Chick Balls, which together raised about $5,000 for the center.

DA Candidate Michele Purvis on Radio JFP Friday

DA candidate Michele Purvis will be the guest on Radio JFP on WLEZ (103.7 FM) Friday at noon. You can also listen to the stream here.

Pigeons and Other Violations at A-1 Pallets

City code enforcement performed a site inspection of A-1 Pallets on Mill Street this morning, one day after Municipal Judge Melvin Priester signed a search and inspection warrant for the business.

Heather Wagner

Heather Wagner credits her mother, Jane Philo, with inspiring her career in victims' rights law. Now retired, Philo spent 23 years working with victims of domestic violence in Biloxi, and Wagner saw the results of abuse first hand. "When she came and picked me up from school, that's where I went, to the shelter," she says.

MySpace Sex Fiends

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, along with seven other state attorney generals, signed a letter Monday demanding that MySpace provide a list of sex offenders who use the online social networking site and explain the steps the company will take to alert both law enforcement officials and potential victims. In October 2006, Wired magazine published an article revealing that it had identified 744 sex offenders who use MySpace. However, the search could not identify sex offenders who either had not registered for sex crimes or used false information in their MySpace accounts.

Stiffing the Help

The Hattiesburg American reported last week that the Department of Labor is investigating a Jackson business owned by Rosemary Barbour, wife of Hinds County Supervisor Charles Barbour, a nephew of Gov. Haley Barbour.

Ellington