Louis Allen Forgotten KillingsUnpunished Civil Rights-Era Crimes
LIBERTY - Henry Allen has been waiting for justice since he found his father’s cold body beneath a logging truck one winter night in 1964.
He’s still waiting.
Standing on the same ground where his father took his last breath, the 62-year-old son of Louis Allen pointed to the concrete culvert where he believes the assassin crouched. "A cowardly bastard laid out in the bushes and stole his life like a rabbit," he said.
He believes that killer is still walking the streets of this community.
"Why is it that God let that no-good bastard live to see his grandchildren?" he asked. "My daddy ain’t bothered nobody, went to the Army, fought in World War II and come home and died right here at his house, all because nobody could run over him."
Louis Allen was a marksman in the war and helped haul ammunition to the front lines of battles that took place on New Guinea and other Pacific islands.
When the Army drafted him, he and his wife, Elizabeth, already had a son - the first of four children. "My mama told me that was the first time she ever seen him cry because he didn’t want to leave his family," the younger Allen said.
Louis Allen survived the war, only to face his own battles when he returned to Mississippi.
On Sept. 25, 1961, he witnessed the killing of fellow African-American Herbert Lee, who was involved in the civil rights movement. Then-state Rep. E.H. Hurst insisted he shot Lee in self-defense.
Henry Allen said his father related how, after Hurst shot Lee, Hurst threw a tire tool on the ground and remarked, "Didn’t y’all see that n----- try to hit me? You seen him, didn’t you, coming at me with a tire tool?"
Louis Allen told the FBI that he had seen Hurst kill Lee in cold blood. Hurst since has died.
Word spread about his cooperation with the FBI. Businesses stopped buying his logs and selling him gas.
On June 30, 1962, deputy Daniel Jones handcuffed him. "All my daddy asked was, ‘Can I have my hat?’ He said, ‘No, you cannot have the hat.’ Then daddy said, ‘Well, can my son bring me my hat?’ "
Henry Allen said Jones remarked, "Hell, no, get in the damn car."
He said Jones struck his father with a flashlight, breaking his left jawbone. Louis Allen later sued Jones, alleging he had been assaulted, but the lawsuit eventually was dismissed.
Reached Friday for comment, Jones would not talk about the matter or the case.
"Just take your information and write your story," he said. "I’m not going to discuss it with you."
Despite his broken jaw, Louis Allen went with others to the Amite County Courthouse a month later to register to vote. A shot was fired, and they were turned away.
FBIdocuments call Jones a "suspected Klan member" - an accusation Jones didn’t deny when the FBI interviewed him recently.
In November 1963, Jones arrested Louis Allen again, this time on charges of writing a bad check and carrying a concealed weapon.
About this time, Henry Allen said, a friendly white businessman visited and remarked, "Louis, the best thing you can do is leave. Your little family, they’re innocent people, and your house could get burned down. All of you could get killed."
Convinced it was no longer safe for him and his family to stay, Louis Allen made plans for the family to move to Milwaukee, where his brother already lived.
On Jan. 31, 1964 - what he had planned to be his last night in Mississippi - Louis Allen was returning home in his logging truck about 8:30 p.m.
He got out of his truck to unhook the gate when gunfire rang out. "The shots came from there," Henry Allen said, pointing. "Two of his fingers got shot off."
His father then tried to hide from his assassin under his log truck, Henry Allen said.
He doesn’t know if there were one or two killers that night, but whoever was responsible walked up and fired two final blasts.
About 11 p.m., Henry Allen arrived at home in his ‘54 DeSoto with his cousin, John Horton.
He knew something was wrong. His father’s truck was blocking the drive, and the headlights were half dim.
He called out first for his father and then searched around the truck before stepping on his father’s hand. A flashlight confirmed the grisly discovery - a hand hiding the damage done by a fatal shotgun blast to the head.
When he started to move his father to take him to the hospital, his cousin told him to get the law first. They drove to the nearest law they knew - Jones, who was now sheriff.
Henry Allen sped to Jones’ house and told him, "Daddy looks like he’s shot, and I want to get him to the hospital."
"You think he’s dead?" he said the sheriff replied.
"Ihope not," he said he responded.
He said he heard Jones pumping his shotgun before following them to the scene of the crime.
On the way back, Henry Allen floored his DeSoto, hitting 85 mph.
His cousin warned him not to go so fast because they’d get a ticket. "The hell with that," he said. "I’m not stopping until I get to Daddy."
After the sheriff arrived, Henry Allen held the flashlight so he could study the crime scene.
"He took everything out of the wallet," he said. "When he got to the NAACP card, he looked at me and then looked back down. He said, ‘Let me see if I can find something that caused the problem.’ "
The sheriff kept the wallet and later returned it with all the money, he said. "The NAACP card - he kept that."
He said the sheriff told him at the scene: "Whatever you tell the FBI, you make sure you tell me first. You see, I’m the one investigating this case. There’s nothing the FBI can do unless you tell me first."
Henry Allen said he thought at the time: "I might be young, but I’m not that big of a fool."
The same day he buried his father, he said his mother made him leave Mississippi because of threats. The family sold their eight-acre tract on Huckleberry Hill.
Since that day, Henry Allen, who now lives near Baton Rouge, has yearned for justice. "My mother never got over it, and I’m still hurt," he said. "It ripped my whole family apart."
He’s been told to leave his father’s case alone, that it’s been too long. "It’s been too long, all right," he said. "It’s been 43 years too long."
To comment on this story, call Jerry Mitchell at (601) 961-7064.
Henry Dee and Charles
Former Mississippi lawman charged in 1964 slayings of 2 black teens
JACKSON, Miss. — Six years ago, reputed Klansman James Seale scoffed at the notion he'd ever be arrested for kidnapping and killing two African-American teenagers in 1964.
He may not be scoffing now, arrested today on federal kidnapping charges in connection with the Ku Klux Klan's May 2, 1964, abduction and slayings of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore.
Asked in 2000 if he had anything to do with crime, Seale replied, "I ain't in jail, am I?"
The arrest of the 71-year-old former cropduster marks the 28th arrest from the civil rights era in the United States over the past two decades.
Since 1998, Moore's brother, Thomas, has been pushing for justice in the case.
Upon learning of the arrest, he choked up. "I'm very emotional," he said. "I don't know what to say."
He said he's grateful and thankful the day finally came. "I'm just glad I had something to do with it," he said. "I just hope Charles and Henry Dee know there is justice on the way."
Dee's sister, Mary Byrd, also welcomed the news. "I feel good now," she said. "Yes, indeed."
Since 1989, Mississippi and six other states have re-examined 29 killings, leading to 22 convictions, most recently in 2005 when a Neshoba County jury convicted Edgar Ray Killen of manslaughter for orchestrating the Klan's killings of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.
"We are extremely pleased to see that the federal government is truly committed to taking care of its unfinished business from the civil rights era," said Alvin Sykes, a Kansas City activist whose work helped lead to the reinvestigation of the 1955 killing of Emmet Till.
The Till case may be presented to a grand jury later this year.
Sykes is now pushing legislation that would create a cold cases unit within the Justice Department to track down unpunished killers from the civil rights era. "When Congress passes the Till bill, you can best believe there will be a lot more perpetrators from that era who will be facing the bar of justice for the lynchings they thought they got away with many years ago," Sykes said.
The slayings of Dee and Moore are among dozens of killings that plagued this nation during the civil rights movement. The names of 40 martyrs from the movement can be found on the National Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, and nearly half of those killings took place in Mississippi.
Seale was arrested once before in connection with the slayings. That came Nov. 6, 1964, when authorities arrested him and Charles Marcus Edwards on murder charges.
At the time, authorities confronted Seale and told him they knew he and others took Dee and Moore "to some remote place and beat them to death," FBI records say. "You then transported and disposed of their bodies by dropping them in the Mississippi River. You didn't even give them a decent burial. We know you did it. You know you did. The Lord above knows you did it."
"Yes," Seale was quoted as replying, "but I'm not going to admit it. You are going to have to prove it."
When authorities arrested Edwards, he "admitted that he and James Seale picked up Dee and another Negro in vicinity of Meadville and took them to an undisclosed wooded area where they were 'whipped,'" a Nov. 6, 1964, FBI document says. "States victims were alive when he departed the wooded area."
According to FBI documents, Dee and Moore were hitchhiking from Meadville when Klansmen coaxed them into their vehicle by pretending to be law enforcement agents. Deep in the woods, Klansmen repeatedly beat the teens, believing they knew something about a rumor regarding gun-running in Franklin County.
Finally, one of the pair claimed the guns were being hidden in a church, hoping to stop the violence.
It didn't.
Klansmen loaded Dee and Moore into the trunk of a car and hauled them across the Mississippi River. There, Klansmen tied them up and weighted them down with a Jeep motor block before dumping them into the Old River two miles south of King, La.
On July 12, 1964, a fisherman found Moore's body and reported it to authorities.
Two months after the arrests, then-District Attorney Lenox Foreman asked to have the murder charges thrown out, saying further investigation was needed.
FBI agents pressed forward, but many were fearful, including potential witnesses. "This informant advised he would not testify under any circumstances because he is concerned for his life and the lives of his family," a Jan. 12, 1965, FBI document reads.
At the time of the killings, Seale and Edwards worked for International Paper Co.
The FBI said the Klan in those days infiltrated unions at that company and others in Natchez. On Feb. 14, 1964, Alfred Whitley, a black employee at Armstrong Tire Co., was abducted and whipped. Two weeks later, Clinton Walker, a black employee at International Paper, was killed on his way home. His car was riddled with bullets.
In 1965, George Metcalfe, an NAACP leader and Armstrong employee was nearly killed when a bomb exploded his car. Two years later, his friend and fellow employee, Wharlest Jackson, died when his truck exploded.
"The Klan ruled then," Thomas Moore recalled. "There were a lot of things that happened back then."
As years passed, the killings of his brother and his friend were forgotten — like so many others from the civil rights era.
In 1998, memories of his brother's killing were rekindled when he read about the dragging death of James Byrd in Texas and decided to write a letter.
Shortly after a judge sentenced Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers to life in prison in 1998 for ordering the 1966 killing of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer, Thomas Moore wrote District Attorney Ronnie Harper, asking him to look into the case. Harper agreed, but acknowledged he lacked the resources to investigate the matter.
In late 1999, the FBI reopened the 1966 killing of sharecropper Ben Chester White after learning the killing took place on federal property, deep in the Homochitto National Forest. Klansmen killed White in an unsuccessful attempt to lure Martin Luther King Jr. to the Natchez area.
On Jan. 13, 2000, The Clarion-Ledger reported White's killing wasn't the only violence that took place in that forest — so had the beatings of Dee and Moore.
After FBI agents reported they had destroyed their files in the case, The Clarion-Ledger found they weren't destroyed and got copies.
The Clarion-Ledger
The FBI reopened the case, only to stall when they believed the FBI's key informant in the case, Ernest Gilbert, was dead.
The Social Security Death Index showed a man of the same name had died in Mississippi in 1999, but the real Gilbert was still alive and living in Clinton, La.
In spring 2000, ABC News producer Harry Phillips tracked him down and got the former Klansman to share his story of a friend's confession to the crime. The FBI then interviewed Gilbert.
Gilbert told The Clarion-Ledger how Seale's brother, Jack, came to him and confessed his involvement in Dee and Moore's killings. "I couldn't live with it," Gilbert said. "I wish I never had been in the Klan. It messed my life up."
But by the end of 2000, authorities let the case grow cold. They still had questions regarding federal jurisdiction and were busy preparing to prosecute Ernest Avants for White's killing.
Federal authorities didn't get interested again in the Dee-Moore killings until July 13, 2005 — a few weeks after jurors convicted Killen in the killings of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner.
That's when Thomas Moore met with U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton of Jackson, convincing him to have his office take a second look at the case.
Lampton has taken a personal interest in the case, sometimes accompanying FBI agents in their interviews.
No charges are expected against Edwards, who has been interviewed by the FBI and may be a witness against Seale.
Mississippi native Myrlie Evers-Williams, chairman emeritus of the national NAACP, still shudders when she recalls the dark days when the Klan reigned in Mississippi.
"It was fear at its worst. You could easily link it to what took place in Nazi Germany," recalled Evers-Williams, whose husband was assassinated by a Klansman in 1963. "It was being afraid to sit in your living room on a sofa because there was a window."
also tracked down and interviewed Seale, who blamed the newspaper for talk of reprosecution. "You don't have anything better to do but to stir this stuff up," he said.