CIVIL RIGHTS & RESTORATIVE JUSTICE CIVIL RIGHTS AND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE PROJECT NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW YEAR END REPORT 2014 CIVIL RIGHTS & RESTORATIVE JUSTICE CIVIL RIGHTS AND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE PROJECT Northeastern University School of Law he Civil Rights and Restorative Jus- Center, and we implemented a pilot pro- Ttice Project at Northeastern Univer- gram for high school students. sity School of Law brings together law- CRRJ brought to national prominence makers, lawyers, activists, researchers, two cases, achieving a measure of restor- journalists and the families of victims ative justice for cases from the era of his- of racial homicides to study and redress tory in which we work. George Stinney, a the systemic failures of the criminal jus- 14 year- old executed in 1944 for the mur- tice system of the mid-twentieth century. ders of two young girls based solely on his Working closely with our research partner unrecorded, unsigned “confession”, was at MIT to build a database of racial homi- exonerated by a South Carolina court. The cides from the Jim Crow era, we engage court adopted the position in our amicus in a form of legal archeology: recovering brief that this was an historical wrong that documents lost to history, examining the needed to be corrected. fault lines of each case, and conceptual- izing continuities over time. Our students In Atlanta, in 1947, two WWII veterans interview witnesses and family members, were murdered on streetcars by armed document their memories, and share of- motormen, a story that had been forgot- ficial accounts of the events. CRRJ main- ten. With the reopening of the Atlanta tains the most comprehensive archive on streetcars this year as a touristic run be- racial homicides in the country, including tween the Ebenezer Baptist Church and records of law enforcement, civil rights the Martin Luther King Center, CRRJ used groups, and state and federal courts, as a case developed by one of our students well as images and oral histories. in an earlier clinic to bring this story back into modern memory, with front page In 2014, in addition to running our annu- stories in the Boston Globe and the Atlan- al student clinic, we undertook three new ta Journal Constitution and a feature on initiatives. We expanded our caseload by NPR’s Weekend Edition. partnering with Southern University Law Cover photos – Top: 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, September 15, 1963 L to R: George Stinney Jr.; CRLS researches Bell case at Amite County Courthouse; Hosea Carter CRRJ DOCKET 2014 Freedom Summer Fellows, SULC Library Alabama ack Bloodworth, 35, was shot by a company officer of Jthe Tennessee Coal and Iron Company in August 1942 near Birmingham. Bloodworth, who was to be inducted into the Army the day after he was killed, went to col- lect his last paycheck from TCI. Bloodworth thought the check was 50 cents short and an argument ensued. The pay clerk summoned the company police, who shot and killed Bloodworth. A local coroner ruled the killing justifi- able, and a Department of Justice investigation produced no prosecution. To protest the slaying, 500 coal miners at the Docena mine went out on strike. Edward Green, 24, was killed in September 1943 in Millbrook, appar- ently because he refused to pick cotton. His body was later found in the Alabama River. CRRJ’s investigation re- vealed that Rev. Green was the half-brother of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. Shuttlesworth, who died in 2011, never knew the fate of Edward Green. CRRJ shared this newly discovered evidence with the Shuttlesworth family. Wal- ter Gunn, 34, was beaten and then shot to death in June 1942 in Tuskegee. The sheriff and his deputy followed Gunn home, pistol-whipped him and then shot him. The apparent motive was that Gunn was friendly with a black Amite County MS Chancery Court Records woman with whom the sheriff may have had a relation- ship. Medical authorities found that Gunn’s skull had been (CRS) of the Department of Justice prosecuted the sher- crushed from blunt force trauma. The Civil Rights Section iff and his deputy charging them under 18 USC § 242 on several indictments, including this killing. A federal jury acquitted the officers. John Johnson, 42 and a father of eight, was shot and killed in March 1948 by Birmingham police officers. CRRJ is investigating about ten 1948 Bir- mingham police slayings, of which Johnson is one. These cases were the subject of an NAACP national police brutal- ity campaign. William Lockwood, 59, was shot and killed by a deputy sheriff in May 1946 in Tuskegee. The deputy had arrested Lockwood’s son, and when the father asked why the young man was in custody, the deputy appar- ently got angry because Lockwood failed to “yes sir” him. The deputy got out of the police car and shot the elder Lockwood while his wife and son looked on (for more in- formation about this case, see “Featured Case” section of this annual report, page 9). Ike Madden, 27, was killed by Birmingham police in March 1948, allegedly because he M.Burnham and CRRJ Students E.Reid, F.Grier and R.Williams, 1 Southern University Law Center 2014 Freedom Summer Fellows, June 2014, Southern University Law Center was resisting arrest. John Pulse was killed by a mob and body, riddled with bullets and burned, was found hanging thrown in a creek in August 1940 in Tuscumbia. He was al- from a tree on the property. Robinson had killed a white leged to have stolen alcohol from white bootleggers. The man in a dispute over a storage battery. Five African-Amer- CRS received a letter from a local citizen addressed to Pres- icans who were in Robinson’s cabin when the mob came ident Roosevelt about the killing but, so far as the records for him were also slain. Robinson’s relatives currently re- disclose, it took no investigative action. Esau Robinson side in Springfield, MA. was lynched in July 1930 at his home in Emelle. Robinson’s Arkansas homas Foster, 26, a sergeant in the Army and a native was killed at a train station in Dumas in April 1945. He had Tof Philadelphia, was killed in Little Rock in March 1942. been traveling with a group of soldiers from a base in Lou- Foster, who was stationed at Camp Robinson, had attempt- isiana to one in California. He was shot by a town marshal, ed to intervene upon witnessing local and military police who told military authorities that as Green was re-board- assaulting off-duty black soldiers. Several policemen beat ing the train after a pit stop, he raised a clenched fist in a Foster to the ground and a Little Rock officer, Abner Hayes, sign of aggression. Willie Henry, 29, a Pacific Theatre vet- shot him five times at point-blank range. Calling the in- eran and a Chicago native, was killed by local police offi- cident a “clear case of murder,” the CRS presented a case cers in Helena in July 1946. Henry, who was disabled in the against Hayes to a federal grand jury in Little Rock. Before war, appeared to be suffering from a mental condition. He the proceedings commenced, Hayes had joined the Army. got into a dispute over a fare with a bus agent in Helena, The jury declined to indict him. A notation made by a mil- who struck him with a pipe. Henry jumped to safety into a itary official on Foster’s family’s application for a grave- nearby ditch, whereupon he was shot to death by Helena stone reads: “death was not in line of duty and was a result police officers. of own misconduct.” Adam Green, a private in the Army, Georgia ustin Calloway, 16, was arrested a day after he was al- loway had been lynched. Aaron Herman Schunell Dixon, Aleged to have assaulted a white woman in LaGrange in 17, was shot by police officers in Atlanta in April 1946. The September 1940. Six masked men persuaded the jailer to police were investigating a gambling game at a housing release the boy to them, whereupon they drove him to the project, where Dixon lived. One of the officers ordered the woods, beat him up and shot him. No prosecutorial action teen to stand near a garage, and as he proceeded to do so, was taken. However, the Calloway case figured prominently the officer shot and killed him. The other boys were taken in the public debate over the definition of a “lynching,” and to the station and forced to sign false statements that Dix- the killing was discussed at a conference held at Tuskegee in on advanced on the officer with a knife. The protests of the December 1940. The NAACP and other groups agreed Cal- housing project manager resulted in an investigation by the 2 Kimbrough Scholars meet town officials, McComb, MS Department of Jus- a private from Montgomery was stationed at Fort Benning tice and the NAACP. when he was found dead on the base hanging from a tree in Several witnesses March 1940, in full uniform with his legs and hands bound. claimed the officer The soldier had gone missing about a month earlier. When who killed Dixon was the public learned of the apparent lynching, letters poured not provoked and that in to the War Department and the Justice Department. The there was no knife. The War Department claimed to have conducted an investiga- Justice Department tion and found there was no foul play, but CRRJ has not declined to pursue the been able to locate the report. Although the Hall case is case.