Hate in America: Remembering Stanley Nelson, Louisiana Journalist Who Exposed Ku Klux Klan Secrets

 

By Joseph Shapiro

When the FBI released a list of unsolved murders from the civil rights era, journalist Stanley Nelson said he read the names and felt shame. It was 2007, and Nelson was the editor of a small weekly newspaper in Ferriday, La. He even wrote the newspaper’s history column. But he didn’t know the names of the Black men murdered in his backyard.

Nelson, who died June 5 after surgery at the age of 69, spent the rest of his life reporting and writing about those cases.

On that list of unsolved murders, the name that bothered Nelson the most was Frank Morris. In darkness, on December 10, 1964, a gang of Ku Klux Klansmen showed up with guns and gasoline and burned Morris alive in his shoe repair store. Morris, hospitalized with severe burns, died four days later.

For white people, like Nelson, in Ferriday – a little Louisiana town across the Mississippi River from Natchez, Miss. – it was forgotten history.

Journalists writing about civil rights era cold cases often went to visit Nelson in Ferriday. He’d take them first to the spot where Morris’ one-story shop had stood on the main road through town. Just the outline of the store’s foundation in concrete and bricks remained.

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Source: npr