“Mr. Jackson was a kind man. Wharlest Jackson Sr. worked at a power plant. He was such a good worker and deserved a raise and a promotion. And because he took a job making 17 cents more an hour, because he took the job, he was killed.”
(Cynthia Jackson, wife of Wharlest Jackson Jr. The Jackson family is from Natchez, Miss.)
On Feb. 27, 2010, the Cold Case Initiative hosted a gathering at Syracuse University that brought family members of those murdered during the civil rights era to talk about their experience in hopes of inspiring people to seek justice.
“Their family members were killed simply because of their race. Because people simply didn’t think as black folks they did not have any reason to be citizens of this country and had no reason to live in this country.”
(Paula Johnson, co-director of the Cold Case Justice Initiative and law professor at Syracuse University College of Law)
“And there was a bomb planted up under his seat and as he went home, the bomb blew up. And the family only lived a few blocks away. And from the kitchen, his mother heard the explosion and she instantly knew what happened…This has caused a lot of trauma for the five children who this woman was left with and to this day. It is a very hard thing for a family to live with when there is no justice.”
(Cynthia Jackson, wife of Wharlest Jackson, Jr. The Jackson family is from Natchez, Miss.)
“This is called the Cold Case Justice Initiative. And a lot of times people ask us, ‘Why are you doing those cases that happened 40 years ago?’ And it is difficult to convey to people sometimes that we are not talking about the past. And as Mrs. Jackson has just said, they are still living with the lack of answers, lack of judicial process and the trauma of these events… Professor McDonald and I are members of a legal profession, we are lawyers and we are law professors. We are not prosecutors, and that is not our position. But we can do the work and our students can do the investigative fact-finding and trying to determine theories about who did it.”
(Paula Johnson, co-director of the Cold Case Justice Initiative and law professor at Syracuse University College of Law)
“To be honest, at that time most everybody was afraid of the white people and they wasn’t saying anything.”
(Rosa Morris Williams, granddaughter of Frank Morris who was burned to death by two suspected Ku Klux Klansmen on Dec. 10, 1964.)
“The other community, across the tracks, they knew. They talked about it amongst themselves. Occasionally one or two would come by me and thought it was good enough in their hearts to tell me whom they thought it night have been. But to this day, the authorities, they lost the records. They say they have no records as of today.”
(Wharlest Jackson Jr., son of Wharlest Jackson Sr. who was killed by car bomb on Feb. 27, 1967, during the civil rights movement. The Jackson family is from Natchez, Miss.)
“We can give them to you!”
(Janis McDonald, co-director of the Cold Case Justice Initiative and law professor at Syracuse University College of Law)
“I know that there is someone they’re helping me and that is caring and that means a lot to me. There are so many things that I didn’t know that I know today.”
(Rosa Morris Williams, granddaughter of Frank Morris who was burned to death by two suspected Ku Klux Klansmen on Dec. 10, 1964.)
“I often liken our work to that of archeology because we are really trying to dig and find the remnants of information… We do our work and give it to the federal authorities and say, ‘You do what you are supposed to do with this information. There is no reason for you not to do something now.’”
(Paula Johnson, co-director of the Cold Case Justice Initiative and law professor at Syracuse University College of Law)
“On his father’s death certificate, they didn’t put homicide. They put accident and that is what the Wharlest Jackson family has to live with.”
(Cynthia Jackson, wife of Wharlest Jackson Jr. The Jackson family is from Natchez, Miss.)
“Because they put accidental death on that certificate, my mother was only able to get half of the insurance policy. If it had said murder, she would have been able to get the whole thing.”
(Wharlest Jackson Jr., son of Wharlest Jackson Sr. who was killed by car bomb on Feb. 27, 1967, during the civil rights movement. The Jackson family is from Natchez, Miss.)
“Where these deaths have occurred under these circumstances, the insurance policies, rather than recognize the racist acts that they were, will put accidental death. That is a fiction. A hurtful fiction to maintain the lie that it was an accident. So we need to correct every aspect of the injustices that have happened. This is a very significant matter, what they put on that document, and that is part of the effort as we seek to rectify.”
(Paula Johnson, co-director of the Cold Case Justice Initiative and law professor at Syracuse University College of Law)
“There is a history to be reconstructed. There are voices to be recorded and there is justice yet to be obtained.”
(Margaret Burnham, law professor at Northeastern University and civil and human rights activist.)
“So there is nothing cold about this. There is nothing past about this.”
(Paula Johnson, co-director of the Cold Case Justice Initiative and law professor at Syracuse University College of Law)
“You can help, because any time that the public officials want to put this on the back burners. Anytime they don’t want to devote the resources that are necessary to do this work. Anytime they no longer care, you can do something about that.”
(Paula Johnson, co-director of the Cold Case Justice Initiative and law professor at Syracuse University College of Law)
(Noel Aliseo is a senior with dual majors in broadcast journalism and Spanish.)
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