Who Killed Brownwood's Lawrence Earl Jackson ?

In ACU visit, journalist discusses investigating Klan crimes

By Brian Bethel / Reporter-News Staff Writer
January 31, 2006

Journalist Jerry Mitchell said that during the civil rights era, the newspaper where he now works was probably ''one of the most racist papers around.''
''If there was any kind of black-on-white violence in the entire world,'' said Mitchell, who joined the Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger in 1986, ''they would put it on the front page. They referred to civil rights activists as communists. They used the term 'monkeys.'''
Speaking to an audience Monday at Abilene Christian University, Mitchell, 46, said his work at the Clarion-Ledger now serves as a counterbalance to the newspaper's former supremacist stance.
Mitchell's yen for ferreting out a good story has helped put four Ku Klux Klansmen in jail, all for crimes committed decades ago.
His writings have earned him 15 awards, and a portrayal in the 1996 Rob Reiner film, ''Ghosts of Mississippi,'' based on a case he investigated.
Mitchell's reporting helped convict Edgar Ray Killen, who orchestrated the June 21, 1964, killings of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.
Seeing such cases brought to justice gives Mitchell a sense of personal satisfaction and stronger personal connections to God, whom he feels has helped direct his work through the years.
Mitchell's work uncovering civil rights cases began in 1989 after seeing the film, ''Mississippi Burning.''
Mitchell began looking into the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a ''state segregationalist spy agency,'' he said.
He discovered that while Mississippi was busy prosecuting Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 death of noted civil rights activist Medgar Evers, forces within the State Sovereignty Commission secretly assisted the defense.
Their goal? Get Beckwith acquitted. The case ended in a hung jury, twice.
Mitchell, intrigued by his findings, wrote a story that led to the victim's widow asking for the case to be reopened.
Beckwith was found guilty in 1994. He was sentenced to life in prison after a remarkable set of coincidences, including the location of photographs of the crime scene and additional testimony, which included information that he allegedly bragged about the crime at a Ku Klux Klan rally.
Such happenings convince Mitchell a divine power was at work.
''How else could that have all happened?'' he asked.
Since then he has been instrumental in cracking a variety of other cases, from the fatal firebombing of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer in 1996 to the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four girls.
Throughout his professional career, Mitchell's willingness to get close to his sources on both sides - Klansmen apparently like to eat barbecue and catfish - as well as to constantly check statements against reality, has served him well.
In the church bombing case, Mitchell destroyed the defendant's alibi with a simple bit of investigation.
Bobby Cherry claimed that he had hurried home to watch wresting on television and thus couldn't have been responsible for the church bombing. A check of the Birmingham News television archives showed that there no wrestling on television that evening.
''In fact, there hadn't been wresting on television for years,'' Mitchell said.
Throughout his time as an investigative writer, Mitchell has received a few threats against both himself and his family.
But he believes both in his work and in his spiritual commitment to the truth.
''I think sometimes in our post-modern society, we tend to think that people are able to have their own version of the truth,'' he said. ''But there are some cases where there is an absolute truth, and that is what must be pursued.''

Contact Wellness Writer Brian Bethel at 676-6739 or bethelb@reporternews.com.
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/nw_ed_coll_univ/article/0,1874,ABIL_7950_4428616,00.html