FBI may reopen cold cases in South

Slayings are from 1950s,'60s

The FBI is considering reopening dozens of cold cases involving slayings suspected of being racially motivated in the South during the 1950s and '60s. An announcement could come as early as Tuesday, according to a law-enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans have not yet been finalized.

In addition to the FBI's investigations, the Southern Poverty Law Center submitted its own list last week of 74 potential unsolved slayings that involved white-on-black violence. Thirty-two of the deaths were in Mississippi. The others were in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Kentucky and New York.

Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project for the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, said each case was researched in the late 1980s when the group was putting together a civil-rights memorial. But it is unclear if each could be considered a civil-rights case, he said.

"The truth is we don't know," said Potok, whose group investigates hate crimes. "In each case there was some evidence to suggest that these were racial murders, but it absolutely was not proven. Had we been able to nail them down, their names would've been literally chiseled into the civil-rights memorial that sits outside our building here."

U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton in Jackson reviewed the list of Mississippi killings Friday and said based on the limited amount of information available none would qualify for federal prosecution under civil-rights statutes. But he said many could still be prosecuted on a local or state level as murders. The deaths outlined by the center happened in a variety of ways, from police-involved shootings to trysts with white women broken up by gunfire.

In most cases, the statute of limitations under federal civil-rights laws will have run out, Lampton said. In others, charges could not be brought because the accused have already faced charges and been cleared by a jury.

"Some of these are going to turn out to be what they call 'good shoots,' where somebody deserved to get shot" during a crime, Lampton said. "But when you're talking about somebody wearing a (Congress of Racial Equality) shirt drowned in the river, that's murder."

Among the deaths listed by the center was that of Sam O'Quinn, who was shot in Centreville, Miss., in 1959. Researchers found information that O'Quinn might have been shot after joining the NAACP. Sheriff Reginald L. Jackson, who has lived in Wilkinson County where Centreville is located for most of his life, said he could not open an investigation into the killing without more to go on.

FBI Director Robert Mueller said last month the bureau was aggressively seeking to solve cold civil-rights cases, vowing to "pursue justice to the end, and we will, no matter how long it takes, until every living suspect is called to answer for their crimes."

Potok said it was not a surprise many of the deaths happened in Mississippi, the state that was the most defiant during the civil-rights era.

"The entire deep South was incredibly violent at that time, but I think that Mississippi outdid every other state hands-down," Potok said. "That's just a fact. I think it's undeniable. I mean when people got to Mississippi they were looking down gun barrels in a way that was beyond even Alabama and Georgia."

Sun Herald