Conviction for Civil Rights Era Murders Signals that Investigations will Continue With or Without Congress.

Recently, many civil rights era cold cases have been brought to their conclusions and, in many of the cases, the family members of past victims have found some sense of justice.  The FBI website on the civil rights cold cases lists among these recently solved cases the convictions of Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry for the church bombing in Birmingham that killed four young girls in 1963.  This list has recently been expanded to conclude the conviction of James Seale. 

The New York Times reported that federal judge Henry T. Wingate sentenced Seale to three life sentences in prison for his part in the kidnapping and horrific killing of two young black men in 1964.  According to the article Seale played a part in the events of that night in Mississippi where two young teenagers, Henry Dee and Charles Moore, were picked up while hitch-hiking, taken to a wooded area near Meadville, Mississippi, beaten and then weighted down before being dumped in the Mississippi River.  Both men were nineteen and died from drowning at the hands of former Klansmen, including Seale.  The judge took under consideration that Seale has cancer and s in poor health but eventually resolved that the "unspeakable crime that could only be inflicted by monsters" had to be punished (NY Times).

Recently a bill that would allow for funding of special investigations into cold case files was passed by the House of Representatives but has since stalled in the Senate.  The Clarion Ledger reported that after the verdict in Seale's case was revealed U.S. Assistant Attorney General Wan Kim from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said that investigations into cold cases would not be dependent on the passage of the bill.  The FBI confirmed this statement on their homepage for cold cases that stated, "the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice announced new partnerships with the N.A.A.C.P., the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the National Urban League to investigate aging unsolved violent crimes from the Civil Rights era."  FBI Director, Robert S. Mueller was quoted as saying, "protecting the civil rights of all Americans is one of the FBI's highest missions, whether the violations occurred four days ago or forty years ago." (FBI)  For a full list of the nearly 100 identified cold cases warranting further investigation, visit the Southern Poverty Law Center website listed below.  The Seale case was one of thirty of these hundred cases that needed investigation.

To learn more about this topic please see:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/25/us/25klan.html

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070824/NEWS/70824012  

http://www.fbi.gov/page2/feb07/coldcase022707.htm

http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?sid=88  

(Southern Poverty Law Center)

http://www.splcenter.org/images/dynamic/main/SPLC021407.pdf