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Frank Morris Murder
Morville Lounge owner caught in Klan, Mafia crossfire
J.D. Richardson found himself in the crossfire of Klansmen and the Mafia over the operation of the Morville Lounge in 1965 and 1966. By late 1966 he felt he had lost control of his own property, was being pressured by the FBI for information on lounge operations, complained that his life had been threatened on several occasions and reported that arsonists may have been responsible for the destruction of his home. |
1965 Concordia lounge arsons linked to KKK / Silver Dollar Group
PHOTO:
A fisherman stands in front of The Blue Heaven, a cafe/lounge operated by Reef Freeman on Horseshoe Lake at Monterey which was destroyed by in electrical fire one afternoon in 1963. A new building was soon constructed in its place where Freeman reopened his lounge under the name "Reef's Place". In February 1964, "Reef's Place" -- about 4,800 sq. ft. -- was destroyed in an arson which the FBI linked to the Monterey Klan and the notorious Silver Dollar Group. (Photo courtesy Bill Atkins.)
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Was Frank Morris killed over deputy Frank DeLaughter's cowboy boots?
Klan informants told FBI agents in 1967 that Concordia Parish Sheriff's Office deputy Frank DeLaughter had it out for Frank Morris, a black man, because the Ferriday shoe shop owner may have done something not even a white man would dare do in 1964 -- stand up to the notoriously violent deputy. |
FBI file reveals Klansman Jack Seale was paid informant
Myron Wayne "Jack" Seale of Natchez was a notorious Klansman implicated along with his brother and father for the Franklin County, Miss., murders of two black teenagers in 1964 and the 1965 murder of a fellow Klansman for allegedly informing to the FBI. |
Retired FBI agents unsure who killed Morris, Edwards
Five retired FBI agents -- four who worked in Concordia and one who worked in Natchez in the 1960s -- say they are unsure who killed Ferriday shoe shop owner Frank Morris or Vidalia motel employee Joseph "JoeEd" Edwards four decades ago. |
Filmmaker David Ridgen recounts final hours for Dee & Moore
| posted Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 @ 8:07 am | Read More… |
(Editor's Note: Canadian filmmaker David Ridgen wrote, produced and directed the award-winning 2007 documentary for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation -- "Mississippi Cold Case." The film is about the 1964 murders of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, both 19, of Meadville, Miss., and the 2007 prosecution of James Ford Seale in those homicides.) |
Ex-Klansman said Red Glover admitted to Metcalfe bombing
In 1967 an itinerant trucker who was a Concordia Parish Klansman in 1965 told FBI agents that he was present when another Klansman, Raleigh Jackson "Red" Glover, admitted planting the bomb that seriously injured a Natchez NAACP leader in late summer 1965. |
Connected by violence -- the mafia, Klan & Morville Lounge
| posted Thursday, July 16th, 2009 @ 8:40 am | Read More… |
By STANLEY NELSON, MATT BARNIDGE & IAN STANFORD
Curt Hewitt moved to Concordia Parish in 1965 with a long criminal record and a mandate to operate the Morville Lounge as a gambling and prostitution hall for racketeering interests that included Carlos Marcello. |
'Bone Lady' returns to Clayton Tuesday in search for Joseph Edwards
It's a long shot at best, but an LSU forensic anthropologist will lead a team of assistants and anthropology students to Clayton on Tuesday in a scientific search for Joseph "JoeEd" Edwards, missing and believed kidnapped and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan 45 years ago. |
Syracuse professors honored for cold case work
| posted Monday, March 23rd, 2009 @ 2:47 pm | Read More… |
Two Syracuse University law professors whose initial interest in investigating the death of Ferriday shoe shop owner Frank Morris two years ago led to the creation of the Cold Case Justice Initiative have been honored by the university. |
Klansmen 'took great pride' in refining bombing skills
One day in the 1960s, a military fighter jet on maneuvers rocketed over the Concordia sky faster than the speed of sound -- 767-plus miles per hour. A sonic boom followed in the aircraft's wake, a thunderclap so powerful that it rattled the windows of the Earcel Boyd Sr. home on 140 Crestview Drive in Ridgecrest. |
Klansman's son recalls Shamrock, Silver Dollar Group, meeting Joe Edwards
In 1964, as Ku Klux Klan groups were growing in Concordia Parish and the Natchez area, members were fighting among themselves over competing strategies for enforcing segregation, differing views on the role of violence and deep suspicions that some Klansmen had been recruited by the FBI as informants. |
Transcripts of two FBI interviews with Frank Morris at Ferriday hospital
| posted Thursday, August 28th, 2008 @ 8:25 am | Read More… |
The first interview of Frank Morris, occurred at 6:35 a.m., Dec. 10, 1964, hours after the 2 a.m. fire. Present were Chief of Police Bob Warren, an FBI agent and an employee of the Ferriday Fire Department. This interview, which is redacted, was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. |
CNN report on Frank Morris Murder
| posted Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 @ 2:06 pm | Read More… |
CNN correspondent Sean Callebs (seated, right) prepares to interview Jake Davis (seated, left) in Ferriday on February 29. Davis recalled the arson of Frank Morris' shoe shop in December 1964. CNN also interviewed the Rev. Robert Lee Jr. and U.S. Attorney Donald Washington. CNN's story on Morris aired last week and can be seen on its website at: |
Why the Klan bombed George Metcalfe, Wharlest Jackson
JACKSON FAMILY ENJOYED HAPPY LIFE IN NATCHEZ; WHEN MEDGAR EVERS WAS ASSASSINATED EVERYTHING CHANGED
In 1951, at the age of 15, Exerlena Williams and a friend left Natchez for Chicago to find work in the excitement of the big city. |
The night Wharlest Jackson was murdered -- Feb. 27, 1967
When an explosion shook the neighborhood around the Armstrong Tire & Rubber plant in Natchez at 8 p.m. on a winter night in 1967, the sound carried all the way to College Hill about seven blocks away where Exerlena Jackson was resting in bed. |
J. Edgar Hoover's interest in Frank Morris murder
Four months after the murder of Ferriday shoe shop owner Frank Morris, a letter sent from Concordia Parish crossed the desk of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, D.C. |
Explosion disturbed quiet December night
A number of people saw Frank Morris during the 24 hours prior to the fire that destroyed his shoe shop, most reporting nothing unusual in Morris' demeanor or routine. |
Frank Morris probe draws U.S. Attorney, FBI to Ferriday
U.S. Atty. Donald Washington of Lafayette, representatives of his office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation will visit Ferriday on Thursday (January 31) as part of the beefed up investigation into the 1964 murder of shoe shop owner Frank Morris. |
HUAC's 1960s probe of Klan organizations
As U.S. Attorney Donald Washington and U.S. Department of Justice lawyers investigate the murder of Frank Morris, they will find a clear connection between the Klan, some members of law enforcement and a criminal element which thrived in the business of gambling, prostitution and meanness. |
Brother of 1964 murder victim visits Syracuse law students
| posted Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 @ 3:52 pm | Read More… |
Thomas Moore, a retired Army Command Sargeant Major, and former Meadville, MS, resident, traveled to Syracuse, N.Y., to consult with Syracuse University Law College faculty and students who are working on the Frank Morris murder investigation. |
Brother of 1964 murder victim visits Syracuse law students
| posted Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 @ 3:52 pm | Read More… |
Thomas Moore, a retired Army Command Sargeant Major, and former Meadville, MS, resident, traveled to Syracuse, N.Y., to consult with Syracuse University Law College faculty and students who are working on the Frank Morris murder investigation. |
John Doar recalls war against the Klan
In the months before Frank Morris was murdered in Ferriday, the FBI had made great strides in beefing up its manpower in an effort to curb violence by the Ku Klux Klan. |
The Klan is dead
A nationally recognized authority on the Ku Klux Klan says those who believe the organization still operates in Louisiana and Mississippi are greatly mistaken. |
Morris murder reported from Texas to Connecticut
Wire service stories on the arson of Frank Morris' shoe shop in Ferriday, and his death four days later as a result of the fire, were printed by several newspapers across the country and reported on local television newscasts. |
Used car dealer questioned by FBI
The suspicions of FBI agents were aroused in December 1964 when they learned that the owner of a used car lot had moved all of his vehicles to a new location just days before a fire destroyed Frank Morris' shoe shop on Fourth Street (Hwy. 84) in Ferriday. |
Klan recruitment efforts heavy in Concordia Parish, Adams County in 1964-65
The nights were scary in Ferriday in the summer of 1965, a civil rights worker said, because you spent your time hoping "that the Klan doesn't come. And you guard and walk back and forth. Anything that moves you shake at it and yell at it. That's the average night. Just walk around and hope the Klan doesn't come." |
Granddaughter, Lewis view Morris murder
Last week, as Rosa Williams waited to see her doctor at his office in Las Vegas, she read an article in this newspaper about her grandfather, Frank Morris, who was murdered at his shoe shop in Ferriday in 1964. |
Motive for Morris murder still unclear 43 years later
On the drive from Baton Rouge to Ferriday on Thursday, July 8, 1965, Mel Atcheson, who grew up on a farm in Iowa, said he got "the impression that everyone considered (Ferriday) to be quite dangerous and that everyone was afraid of the Klan." |
James Ford Seale convicted; his Concordia Parish past
The man convicted June 14, 2007, with the 1964 deaths of two 19-year-old men in Mississippi was employed as a policeman by the Town of Vidalia in the 1970s and was also involved in two plane crashes during that decade, one of which was the deadliest in Concordia's history. |
1964 death of Frank Morris on FBI list
The 1964 death of Ferriday shoe store owner Frank Morris is one of dozens of unsolved Civil Rights era cases the U.S. Department of Justice says it may review further. |
Billups worker saw dark sedan
An employee at the Billups Station told the FBI that on the night Frank Morris' shoe shop in Ferriday was set on fire that he heard what sounded like a pistol shot and seconds later saw a dark-colored car pull out of the alley and turn left toward Vidalia. |
Billups worker saw dark sedan
An employee at the Billups Station told the FBI that on the night Frank Morris' shoe shop in Ferriday was set on fire that he heard what sounded like a pistol shot and seconds later saw a dark-colored car pull out of the alley and turn left toward Vidalia. |
Nurses remember Morris' brief hospital stay
Eleven months after the Concordia Parish Hospital (now Riverland Medical Center) opened its doors in Ferriday on Jan. 26, 1964, Frank Morris was treated for severe burns in the emergency room and then moved into Room 101. |
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