Attorney feels driven to solve 1940 slaying of NAACP member
The photo features a man named Elbert Williams and two dozen other charter members of the NAACP's Brownsville branch, an audacious group of men and women who registered black voters in West Tennessee in the early days of the civil rights movement.
Three-quarters of a century after what some historians believe to be the first NAACP member killed for daring to speak up for civil rights, Emison has gotten federal authorities to take another look at it.
When he was a child, Emison sometimes heard his father, grandfather and uncle — all lawyers — talk about lynchings and other atrocities against African Americans.
Emison's relatives seldom discussed the stories behind the crimes — doing so ran counter to a code of silence typical of small Southern towns.
Assistant Attorney General Wendell Berge said in a letter to U.S. District Attorney William Clanahan that the "obvious purpose" of the police and others had been to "frighten the entire colored population of Brownsville and thus prevent qualified Negroes from exercising their franchise."
When the police got a tip that he was planning an NAACP meeting at his home, a group of men led by police officer Tip Hunter went to his residence, said they needed to question him outside and then took him away.
A coroner's jury ruled the body was "decomposed so badly we could not make thorough examination" and that the cause of death was believed to be by "foul means by persons unknown."
Later, in an exclusive interview with the Amsterdam News, a black weekly in New York, Annie Williams said the local authorities had tried to prevent her from seeing her slain husband, and that "the coroner had already issued the order to have the body buried as soon as possible."
There were two holes in his chest that looked like bullet holes, the skin on his arms, legs, buttocks was bruised and blistered.
Emison recently turned his findings over to Justice Department officials who he said are giving Williams' case serious consideration despite the department's announcement last year that it will likely stop prosecuting civil rights-era murders that occurred in the South.
Edward Stanton III, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, told The Associated Press the department is reviewing materials from the case, but didn't say when a decision will be made.
Because what it says to me is that no sacrifice should be forgotten; no sacrifice should ever disappear into the sands of time.