Justice

A Letter to Caller Number One

"Why don't y'all just leave him alone?" The passion in the caller's voice was alarming. "He's an old man. Just leave him be. Let sleeping dogs lie." When I heard these words back in February, I stepped away from the sink where I was washing dishes and stood in front of my television, with suds dripping down onto my feet and the hardwood floors below. The anonymous caller was ranting to the hotline of a local news station, and the "old man" was James Ford Seale.

Seale the 'Last' Case? We Doubt It.

To fill space this weekend in The Clarion-Ledger's package on the James Ford Seale case, reporter Jerry Mitchell returned to a well from which he has drunk in the past with a story headlined "Seale Case Could Be Last of Its Kind." The article is a thinly disguised prognostication that seems to pander to a perceived demographic of readers who are "tired" of civil rights cases being brought to trial. But the article flies in the face of evidence that both the federal government and Mississippians intend to prosecute any of these old civil rights cases when the facts of the case warrant it.

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.

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.

With A Good Intention

People come up and thank me all the time for being "daring." Or "courageous." Or "fearless." No, the Jackson Free Press is not particularly daring or courageous (although admittedly we can be a bit fearless now and then). We're just trying to do our job the best we can. Sometimes we succeed better than others. But "daring"? Not really. Unless you mean willing to risk angering an advertiser or a reader when we tell an unpopular truth.

The Crime: May 2, 1964

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.

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.

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.

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.

Transforming Lives

Domestic violence affects one in three women in their lifetimes, according to the Family Violence Prevention Fund. The staff at the Center for Violence Prevention is trying to quell the national and statewide epidemic of violence against women, particularly in the metro area, by transforming the lives of the women who come to them.

Lose the Residency Requirements

Jackson's City Council is considering extending the residency requirements of fire and police employees to an area 30 miles beyond the city of Jackson. City ordinance currently demands that city employees live inside Hinds County, but a 30-mile extension would allow the city's personnel department to consider applications from deep within nearby counties like Madison and Rankin.

Ellington