"American Reckoning": 55 Years After KKK Murder of Mississippi NAACP Leader, Case Remains Unsolved

this is democracy now democracynow.org the war and peace report i'm amy goodman it's black history month this month marks 55 years since the assassination of an naacp leader in the city of natchez mississippi on february 27 1967 warless jackson senior died when a bomb attached to his car exploded at the time jackson was the treasurer of the naacp and natchez he died on his way home from working his first day of work at the armstrong tire and rubber plant he had just been promoted to a job never held by a black man before warless jackson senior was 36 years old the father of five the fbi suspected the assassination was carried out by the inner circle of the ku klux klan known as the silver dollar group but no one was ever charged in his murder this tragic story is told in a new documentary that examines the civil rights struggle in natchez it's called american reckoning this is an excerpt from the film featuring warless jackson senior's son warless jackson jr who recalls his father's assassination at the time he was just eight years old i stood right here working on my bicep in front of my house i was trying to get my banana seat right and i had a big nice big fat tire on the back of it i used to see those uh guys riding those choppers man i wanted to make my bike like that too a little 20 inch bicycle i heard the explosion in my mind like what is that i never heard anything like that before the jumps on my bicycle i shot right there and shot straight to this here straight here you can look straight down the street to mlk i'm i'm noticing people outside of their houses you know and i just rode up there and started looking in [Applause] i saw a general lady in the street not knowing who he was and seeing the truck knowing who truck that was and not be able to connect the dots together i saw a shoe that he was wearing and i grabbed that shoe and came to the house later i heard from my mother as i grew up i had come back with his flesh in the shoe an excerpt from the new documentary american reckoning the film goes on to look at how the community in natchez mississippi responded to the assassination of warless jackson senior nearly one thousand [ __ ] are marching silently through the center of natchez protesting the bomb slaying monday night of civil rights leader father of five wallace jackson jackson an official of the local naacp had left his new job last night at the armstrong rubber company presumably on route home the cab and the truck were completely my father looked out for the black community in this town and believe me this community loved my father he was just a guard to me my father sacrificed his life so that we can have a better community and you don't have to be afraid but will we ever get justice [Music] they've been killing us here for 400 years right it's got to come to a head and we sick and tired of that we don't build this country as soon as the white people realize that we aren't going nowhere the better it's gonna be for all of us [Applause] wake up white people before it's too late an excerpt from the new documentary front line and retro report's new documentary american reckoning premiering tuesday february 15th on pbs and online at pbs.org frontline youtube and in the pbs video app the project is supported by wnet's chasing the dream we're joined now by three guests denise ford jackson the daughter of warless jackson senior as well as the film's directors brad liechtenstein and yaruba richard it's great to have everyone with us and yaruba former producer at democracy now great honor to have you back as well yaruba i want to begin with you talking about this just devastating story that is many story lines put together it is the story of a city in this country where at the highest levels the conspiracy of the government against the black population of natchez and the fact that we did not many people in this country i should say had not heard of warless jackson let alone his assassination his murder absolutely um thank you amy for having us on um it's a story that when brad uh told me about uh brad had been developing and he'll tell you about that for a couple of years before asking me to partner with him on this project but when he told me about it um i was you know immediately uh intrigued and interested uh in this story that i'd never heard of i'm always love projects where i am learning something and uh uncovering a story that hadn't been told and uh then when i saw the uh trailer that brad initially made and i saw that the amazing archival footage that really documented what was happening uh in natchez uh and the murder of uh warless jackson senior i had never seen you know this archival footage i had never seen uh uh i'd never seen a um a you know the the documentation of the story that was happening like in real time let me let me say something about that and i want to bring brad in i mean this is so astounding the level of detail of footage you have from over half a century ago documenting the movement in natchez and you have a direct link to the story as well as you were an intern with john lewis when he was running for congress and john congress member john lewis the civil rights icon figures into this story yes good morning and thank you for asking me because i love to um remember my relationship with mr lewis who i met when i was 15 years old i went to this campaign and then we became lifelong friends and he's the author of the emmett till act and that's really how this project got started i was visiting him in his office in washington and we were talking about different ideas for films secretary brendan jones told me about the cold cases that were being re-examined under the emmett till act and that that might be a thing to focus on and then i learned about the story of wireless jackson senior and then discovered that filmmaker ed pincus and his filmmaking partner david newman had actually been in natchez at the exact same time making the movie black matches and that there were hours and hours and hours of outtakes and that they had returned right after the assassination of mr jackson and started to try to make a sequel and so there's something like 30 hours of footage that never saw the light of day and then we discovered that that footage had been collected into a collection at the amistad research center and was actually going to be available to use which is what gives us the ability to tell this story in real time even though as you pointed out it happened over half a century ago so i want to bring denise in but first to the documentary again american reckoning this excerpt begins with an archival clip from 1965 in natchez to the school board for the natchez allen county public schools the understanding hereby petition your board to initiate racial desegregation of the public schools under your jurisdiction and control by late august the naacp filed a lawsuit against the schools for desegregation we would follow request that the names of these or those signed this petition not be made public in order to protect the signers from possible appraisals and harassment there was a fear and a resentment of desegregation of the schools at the time in the white community there was just wild rumors of what was going to happen after the blacks took over my dad in the clan did black people in our schools offices anything they wanted to get it stopped at all costs george metcalf president of the natchez chapter of the naacp was critically injured in natchez this afternoon when dynamite hidden beneath the hood of his car exploded when he turned on the mission when the bomb went off on the hood of his vehicle a lot of that metal and brass just went back into his face after the bombing of metcalf's car the black community explodes after the 1965 bombing of the car of the natchez indelible acp leader george metcalf who did survive that civil rights activists organized a massive boycott against white-owned businesses this clip features charles evers the brother of medgar evers who was assassinated two years earlier in 1963 at his home in jackson mississippi you tell the good mayor that i said you can get all that injunction conjunction and some junction you want to get we're not going to spend our money with them anymore until we hire people and give them decent jobs and recognize individuals and human beings we decided we're going to block every white store in natchez downtown natchez is under a strict boycott by nearly half the population the boycott began when the negros failed to get their 12 demands from city officials and mayor the time had a whole shopping center me and nasa we shut his whole damn champion down keep the white man's dollar out of his pocket and you can control him instead of him controlling you that last speaker was james stokes a spokesperson of the armed african-american self-defense group deacons of defense now let's turn to another clip of american reckoning about the protest in natchez in 1965. there are these marches at night that have taken place 300 marches are arrested for parading without a permit i'm the chief police jt robinson if you don't disperse and go home i will have to put you under arrest parading without a permit which is in violation of the city ordinance there's another attempt to march 150 are arrested and then yet another march is attempted we walked that fire block before the police stopped [Music] dead buses coming and picked us up and took us to washington [Music] once they're at parchment it's cold they were stripped naked they were given a laxative they made us all drink about eight ounce glass they said well you gonna drink this medicine or else [Music] get beat to death [Music] again a clip from american reckoning and now we're going to denise ford jackson featured in the film the daughter of warless jackson senior the treasurer of the naacp chapter in natchez who was assassinated two years later from what we saw in that clip in a bombing by the ku klux klan denise it's 55 years later but our deepest condolences go to you and your family as you live this every day of your lives it is so clear in this documentary yes it is and thank you for having me this morning so you know if you can talk about i mean the story of parchment your mother was in parchment right your mother was one of those arrested she like your dad um would was unrelenting in trying to challenge the racist system and they described this horror of being put in these cold cells stripped naked and forced to drink laxatives so that and they obviously had no access to bathrooms and this is pure torture what happened to your mother after this well she uh became ill she formed a illness that kept her bed written and uh that mean my dad had to take care of the five children cook fours call my hair and then once she was able to she came up with a sickness called lupus which nothing kept her down but she was able to you know regain her strength back and she was able to do what she needed to do for the family so she's ill she's come out of parchment your father's continuing to organize that was 65 your father is assassinated in 67. um tell us what happened and did you i mean you're you're a little kid at the time but this ominous sense of the targeting of your family the only thing i can relate to is that i know that my dad was under a lot of pressure being threatened with you know being um able to ex he wanted to accept the promotion at armstrong he discussed it with her mama mom told him not to accept the position but he was a man that didn't take no for an answer they were trying to make a uh stand here in the county in the city of natchez to let people know that you know we as a black was just as capable of having handling these supervisor positions as a white man even though they said these positions were for white only but my father took a stand to [Music] make out want to make our community better and my mother was one who was objected to it but he wouldn't take no he didn't he wouldn't accept the word no he said i'm gonna take this stand because it was uh it gave him a five cent raise to help him with the five children that you know that he was trying to raise so frontline and retro report this documentary that brad and yaruba have made also taps into the groundbreaking reporting of stanley nelson another stanley nelson of the south who investigated the allegations of the involvement of this ku klux klan you can't really call it an offshoot i think the inner circle of you know sort of the white collar of the white sheets known as the silver dollar group this clip begins with leland boyd the son of a klan member i think my dad was probably on the foundation of the formation of the silver dollar club but we would go in a restaurant and there would be several people sitting in there and my dad walked up and he dropped a silver dollar on the table and says does that have a familiar ring to it and uh the guy sitting at the table said yeah that sounds like freedom i don't know how to term them and this is like a crude term but if you had a an all-star clan team that would be they would be into pro bowl a silver dollar group member would be the kind of guy that thought wearing a robe was silly who thought burning crosses was silly he rejected the old plan because they weren't achieving anything he kept his time and hand grenades in the house i was off them you just hear little things about we got to take care of business kind of thing in the record you would have some of these members of the silver dollar group going back and forth across the mississippi river supporting each other with these very nefarious activities they were very quick to extreme violence they felt very comfortable slaughtering people and knowing they can get away with it in that clip we heard from the children of two silver dollar group members the last speaker was cynthia diedle who is the former fbi civil rights unit chief charged with trying to solve some of these cold cases that dated back decades brad lichtenstein let's go back to you uh what you learned what the family learned i mean this amazing meeting that denise you and your brother and sister had with stanley nelson the white reporter in natchez who really took on these cold cases brad right stanley actually started writing about these cold cases in 2008 right at the beginning of the till act and it really was because he uh realized he lived not lived i'm sorry he worked across the street practically from where a different murder had taken place um in uh right across the river in vidalia and faraday uh louisiana and he got curious and he realized that if he didn't know anything about it at least probably most white people didn't know the stories and he started digging into the cases and of course he met the jackson family and you know had taught to them some over the years and really he provided the full story which the family never could get from law enforcement whether it was local law enforcement or federal or the fbi tell us denise about that meeting that you have with stanley nelson with your brother warless and with your sister as he lays out for you who exactly he believes killed your father and how he did it it was one of the most amazing meetings that we've had because back in the back in 67 when we tried when my mom was living and trying to find out information she was given uh documents that would have been redoc rejected everybody's name was scratched out she kept going back to the law enforcement even the fbi came and told her they they they came to assist the local police and from there we never received any names anything but meeting with stanley nelson he was able to give us he was able to me to give me more closure to my daddy's death than the people here in natchez mississippi were able to give her and i heads off to stanley for the job that he had done even the documents that we received from the fbi you know was doc i mean redacted and we still didn't know anything so i just appreciate the work that he did because he gave us insight and talk about who you understand killed him i mean there's a broader question like it's not one person but the person who put the bomb on the left clicker um of uh his car so that when he turned left they knew when he came from the factory he would have to make a left turn into the black community and it was set for they believed he'd be going home at a time when all the kids were outside and would have killed so many but he had to work overtime so it was like eight at night and so when he makes a left turn the kids aren't out it just kills him who that man was of the white doll of the um uh silver dollar group um stanley found out it was egg glover yes um somebody that we didn't know i don't know who later died someone who's been related he had been dead uh for a while even before the emmett tell act was passed he had been dead and i want to go to the emmett till act because now we're talking about the closure of all of these cases this is a clip from american reckoning about the fbi closing its investigation into your dad's murder into the murder of warless jackson senior this is your brother warless jackson jr it was a fbi agent that knocked on the door i opened the door he said i'm looking for wurliss jackson jr he went back to his vehicle and gave me that letter i received this letter in the mail and it was a slap in the face i felt like the fbi brought all this attention out to make them make themselves look good and you know and our families still suffered i often tell myself nothing will ever survive over here because of the prejudice that happened in this building a lot of sadness a lot of hurt people are going to be frustrated if someone isn't convicted if someone isn't arrested but at some point a determination has to be made to close the case we've talked to everyone who could possibly have any real information how many times are we going to reinvestigate there's no more value in asking more questions yoruba richin uh we're going to end with you so you have this emmett till law that john lewis really authored and pushed through 150 cases 125 of them closed with not one indictment and this goes right to natchez which is the microcosm of what we're seeing today if you could talk about whether in fact this really ends things or isn't this the case for reparations or for a kind of lawsuit that is a conspiracy of the entire state i mean parchment was not one guy putting a bomb in a car it was the state going after all those who protested injustice and natchez yes i think that the fact that no one has been indicted uh for borla's case or for these other cases shows that the limits of the justice system in uh in holding people accountable for crimes that happened many years ago i think it's important to note that uh we found out that uh congressman lewis he wanted a larger um a larger uh uh a larger thing not just a for the justice department to open up these cases but he was really looking for a truth and reconciliation commission uh that would uh in the in the you know vein of south africa where all these crimes would come to light where people had to come and uh and talk and air uh what happened and get at the truth um of course he wasn't able to do that i mean we live in a an extremely uh uh polarized um country where you know talking the truth about this this stuff is you know that people don't want it to happen we see that now with what's going on with this critical race theory ridiculousness but um all that to say is that i think this this does open up a case for reparations which we are now talking about in a real way for the first time um and looking at what these families deserve uh what is justice for these families reparations uh mental health uh uh mental health um you know stuff to make them able to deal with these this trauma that has happened that we see with denise that we see with warless jr what kind of services can we provide so we really need to have that conversation um because it's true these people are dead uh you know for the most part i mean for these for the crimes that were committed long ago so how else can we repair um the damage that was done and that generational damage and i think that is about reparations and other services that can provide hope and help for these families yoruba you're premiering this film at the lemley in los angeles and then next week it's going to premiere on pbs and i'm wondering what you want people to take away from this i want people to take away uh to understand that uh first off we didn't get to talk much about the deacons for defense but that the civil rights movement or the black freedom struggle as i say um is not just reduced to a non-violent strategy and that the deacons for defense were one of many organizations that fought back and protected their community um and that is also how uh rights and and uh were won in many different communities um so i want people to understand that and i want people to uh take away uh and to find out more about the history that has been erased we have five seconds west to find out more about the history that's been erased and and also white people especially because we're at a critical moment in this country where they're trying to erase our history europa richard and brad lichtenstein directors of american reckoning and denise ford jackson thank you so much you

Channel: Democracy Now!

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Keywords: Amy Goodman, Breaking News, Democracy Now, Independent Media, News, Politics, World News, democracynow

Id: 9-8U-V8WdS0

Length: 29min 21sec (1761 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 11 2022