Skeletons In and Out of the Closet - Follow-up

The two researchers who were here flew back to Boston last night and I wanted to add a bit of information about their work and why they were here.

Professor Margaret Burnham and law student Brett Watson came here as part of the work of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at the Northeastern University School of Law. You can read about that program at this link:  Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project

The goal of the project is to resolve lingering issues from the Civil Rights era and to preserve and memorialize the victims of Civil Rights abuse. The reason for coming here are several in nature. The Jones case was one of a rash of killings of returned African-American war veterans in the Summer of 1946 and gained great attention in the national press, including a discussion in Time magazine that outraged local residents with its description of Minden. More importantly no one was ever convicted of any crime in this matter. The suspects were never indicted on state charges of murder and the Federal trial for violation of Civil Rights ended with acquittals. So, techincally this is an open case.

Some may be alarmed if you go to that link and see that Professor Burnham has an amazing track record of success in her legal career and has actually obtained convictions in some long-lingering Civil Rights cases. However, our case is somewhat different because of the age of the case.  The victim was killed, his only child died in 1978, his widow died at Meadowview in 2006. The victim who escaped the mob left Louisiana and is apparently dead. All of the men tried for the crime have died -- the first a victim of murder himself less than two years after the Jones murder. So there is no one left to try. In addition, Professor Burnham was very willing to not press the issue with the families of some of those involved in the case who are still living. Her major goal was to flesh out the record and fill in the blanks. I have not yet received their summary of what they learned, but yesterday we were able to confirm the burial site of John C. Jones, which had been somewhat of a question for years. They have indicated to me that they did learn much and recieved leads to more information. So, it was a useful trip.