RESPONSES
Ten persons have responded to my web site, MURDER IN MISSISSIPPI. Some have complained that their names were slandered and that they were given no opportunity to respond to the site. I can only remember two of these persons (except for Rick Abraham) and neither of those two have I seen in at least 40 years. Most of them were not mentioned on the site and were never known to me.
What is most remarkable about the first 9 respondents is that they are in total denial, a meaningless but favorite phrase of psychobabblers, that applies to no one more aptly than themselves. Nothing will ever convince them that their friends and relatives did anything wrong or acted criminally. White people are still so proud of their Klan butchers and killers that they cannot see the world through an empirical pair of glasses. Whether they were Klansmen or not is moot: they exhibit such adulation for the Klansmen that they could all be classified at least as sympathizers or apologists, if not members, of the White Knights.
Their responses have now been
collected, printed in full, and their authors
been given or not given a correction. Nothing is changed in their
responses except that their email addresses have been deleted. The first 9
appear to be aficionados of William Faulkner's literature: only the tenth one
knows how to create a paragraph indent. These 10 persons are:
Joan Jones Brown
Kelly Drew Alexander, Jr.
Hugh L. Tyler
Alice Mathews
Major Treadway
Danny Tyler
Pat Brooks
Anonymous
Julie Cuniglio
Rick Abraham
From: JOAN JONES BROWN
I AM A PRODUCT OF ONE OF THE MAD MEN THAT YOU DISCUSSED IN YOUR OUTRAGEOUS ARTICLE. MY MOTHER WAS THREE QUARTERS WHITE AND MY FATHER WAS THE INFAMOUS MERLIN JONES. I HAVE NEVER KNOWN ONE BLACK MAN WHO DISRESPECTED MY FATHER AND MY FATHER TRIED TO HELP ALL MEN BLACK AND WHITE. OF COURSE HE WOULD PUNISH THOES WHO WERE THEIVES BOTH BLACK AND WHITE BUT HE WAS A GOOD MAN AND HE DID NOT HEAD THE KLU KLUX KLAN. MY BROTHER WAS MY FATHER'S SON AND THAT IS ALL I CAN SAY ABOUT HIM BUT MY SISTER AND I ARE VERY CLOSE AND WE LOVE EACH OTHER VERY MUCH! WE MET SEVERAL YEARS AGO AND HAVE SHARED OUR LOVE AS SISTERS EVERY SINCE. YOU WERE THE DRAFT DODGER AND YOU WERE MAD AT THE WORLD AND STILL IS BUT THAT IS NOT OUR FAULT! STOP DOGGING YOURSELF AND LIVE AND LET LIVE! I AM ALSO A CIVIL RIGHTS WORKER! HA! WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT?
REPLY
Thank you for your comments.
From: Kelly D. Alexander, Jr.
This is a reply to the slanderous lies told in Sudduth's
article entitled Murder in
REPLY
Thank you for your
comments. It was confirmed by the US Senate Judiciary Committee and shown
on CSPANN about 1992 that Kelly Drew Alexander and his wife Ruth Treadway
Alexander lectured Hollandale school children on the murders and lynchings
carried out by the Ku Klux Klan. I had written a paper on the topic and sent it
to several historians and the US Department of Justice. Somehow, the
paper found its way to the Committee and they held a public hearing on
it. The hearing was also attended by Senators Biden,
Kennedy and Dole as well as President Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno and
General Norman Schwartzkopf.
By the way, Attorney
General Mike Moore was also subpoenaed to that hearing. Mr. Moore confirmed to
the committee that those lectures did occur. Mike Moore told no fibs to
the US Senate Judiciary Committee. The Committee also learned from Mr.
Moore that the State Sovereignty Commission under the leadership of Erle Johnston, had ordered Mr. Alexander to have myself and other
civil rights workers conscripted. Erle Johnston is more to blame than Mr.
Alexander.
No one will ever know how many people were conscripted by Erle Johnston as he destroyed the records of his criminality. Johnston himself avoided all responsibility for his criminal actions and left everyone else to take the blame. You can order the video-taped hearing from CSPANN itself.
Even though the Senators were divided on its merits, having my paper read by the Senate Judiciary Committee was the highest honor that anyone has ever bestowed upon me.
Mr. Alexander the Senior also conscripted a black civil rights worker from
You can find more
details of this case in James Dickerson's book North To
Canada. You can also find a trial transcript at the US Courthouse
in
Mr. Alexander claimed to
hold a law degree from the
If one appears in Klan
uniform, advocates Klan programs, leads Klan meetings, avows his membership in
the Ku Klux Klan and hosts Klan killers to his home…then what else would it
take to prove that he was head of the Ku Klux Klan ?
The hallmark of the Klansmen is their irrationality and illogic, to the Klansmen :
2 + 2 = 5.
From a false
proposition everything follows: If Socrates wears green pants then it is
snowing in
All veterans of WWII
were given a
bronze footstone for their graves, to note their dates and status of
service by the Veterans Administration. The grave of Mr. Alexander has no
such footstone. It is doubtful that he ever earned either a Purple Heart
or a Silver Star medal, as those were reserved for actual combatants. He
most certainly was not anything called a "Lieutenant Commander", as
there was no such rank.
The Baptist religion
cannot be equated with the Ku Klux Klan.
Yet there seems to be a sub-sect of persons who are members of the Klan
as well as the Baptist religion. The
majority of Baptists have no knowledge of their historical connection to the
Klan. In no kind of way can they be held
responsible for all the violence, murder and mayhem carried out by the
Klan. A great many Baptists risked their
lives and fortunes by standing up to the KKK, among them Presidents James Carter
and Bill Clinton.
If you do not accept the
rulings of
From: Hugh L. TYler
Charles F. Sudduth Jr. Re: Murder In Mississippi
Webster dictionary always defines the object of discussion. I will use it’s format. Charles F. Sudduth Jr. – Liar, ruthless w/
willful intent, fantasy dreamer, one looking for attention, and to use his own
words, a “slimeball”, a gutless creature with the
characteristic that match an Idiot. Many times in life we have to deal with
truths and unfortunately untruths. This article has so many lies and told in
the first person as being eyewitness to is amazing. Everyone that is mentioned
is personally known to me. The least known is Major Treadway and I talked to
him on more than one occasion on his trips to Hollandale. I know all the
families that are mentioned and watched most of them grow up and carve their
place in society. I know your family and I knew you. I know when you turned
yellow and ran from the call of our country, defending your right to free
speech (per this filthy article, Murder in
REPLY
Thank you for your
comments.
Houston Tyler was a good friend of mine. We worked together on the Bueker farm
for as far back as I can remember. (Mr. Bueker paid me $2.00 per day to
shoot blackbirds after school in his rice fields and $5.00 per day for a full
day's work. Every day he gave me a brick, 500 rounds, of .22 shells with
the instruction not to return until all were gone. I must have fired
nearly a million rounds in those fields. He did not know it, but I would
have worked for free.)
I never saw
One day I mentioned the
lynchings that had taken place on the court house square in Belzoni. The person
next to me asked him, "What's that he said?"
I knew nothing about
those lynchings in the Town of
As to the person who was murdered at the Coon on the Log contest, I do not know if yall chained him to a log, tied him to a log or tied him inside a cotton sack, the latter is the most probable. I suppose yall would claim that no one killed him because it was the dogs that killed him, but this is only linguistic contortionism and there is no point in quibbling over each and every minor detail. The point is not that I do not have a photograph of it; the point is that a man was murdered and disemboweled there on that day. I saw his guts and body parts splattered all over the place. Mr. Alexander kept the raccoons in a cage at the back of his plantation home.
"I am Hugh Tyler, the one not mentioned in your article".
As you were the Fire Chief and Superintendent, you know all about the murder of Mrs. Daisy Savage and her grandson. Part of your salary was paid out of Federal funds; you may not have the right to invoke the 5th Amendment. Some of her killers are still alive. Why not write to the FBI and tell them what you know about Mayor Fore and his 4 assistants in those murders? You can give them a far more detailed account than I can. Or were you among the killers? They will cut some slack for the first eyewitness, maybe even a reward. But don't wait to be the last. You will find no mercy. One word of caution: Never, never, never tell a lie to a Federal agent, a Federal grand jury or any Congressional committee. The results can be unpleasant.
From: Alice Mathews
I am Ace Mathews daughter. I appreciate the information you provided on the disinformation being published by Charlie Suddeth. I know for a fact the information included about Ace Mathews (by the way he did not even investigate enough to get the name spelled right) is a lie. I could list many rebuttals, and I will in a later posting. But first, let me make this statement, it is easy to fabricate lies about people who are no longer alive. Especially when you are suppose to be the only witness. I lived in Arcola all my life. I was the same age as Mr. Suddeth when this incident allegedly occured. It never happened. Doesn't anyone realize it would have been all over the papers? That the the FBI would have gotten involved? There is no way my brother, sisters and I would not have heard of any lynching in our town. No matter who committed the crime. My father raised what were considered "radical children" who fought for the rights of all men to be equal during this time of civil unrest. Does that sound like a KKK member to you? Ace was my father's nickname. He was never known as anything else, even though his name was Aaron. I think Mr. Suddeth is desperately trying to pass himself off as a Civil Rights Activist long after the shooting is over. Long after the rest of us who really were activist have already done what we could during the time of civil unrest. What I don't understand is why no one has challenged Mr. Suddeth by bring a liable suite against him. His pathetic attempt to increase his importance in the Civil Right arena is just that, pathetic. I will post more later, when I have had time to reflect on what I will do. Thank you.
REPLY
Thank you.
Hundreds of people witnessed the three men hanged at the Arcola bridge. Aside from my own account I have eye-witness
accounts from 7 of those persons, 3 black and 4 white. If those killers did not
want to have their actions recorded then they should have thought about that
long before now, back when they were having so much fun killing innocent
persons for no reason.
There is a reason why
neither Mike Moore nor anyone else will ever bring a liable suite
against me. It is
because neither he nor anyone else can follow the rules of court: they cannot
give depositions, two sets of interrogatories, face counter claims or
charges. To do so would place themselves in
extreme legal jeopardy. Mike Moore may be ignorant as to what constitutes
American law, but I am not. The practice of law in
As to the fact that Ace
Matthews was also nick-named “Broderick Crawford. Crawford was a more accomplished actor that
many critics realized. He often played
bigoted loud mouthed southern enforcers.
In one of his western roles, Crawford is staring upward with a smile on
his face as one of his victims is lynched in the back ground. That Ace so identified himself
with that persona that others referred to him as “Broderick Crawford” only
shows how super uneducated Ace was.
It was in the movie All
The King’s Men based on the novel by Robert Penn Warren in which he described himself over and over
as an “educated hick” which could just as easily have been the life story of
Attorney General Mike Moore as the life of Louisiana governor Huey Long.
From: Major Treadway
Background: On
REPLY
Thank you for your
comments
As I recall, you were birthed at the maternity ward at Kings' Daughters
Hospital in Greenville 3 days before I was born there. We were born in
the same room and delivered by the same physician, Dr. Mangold. Your
mother was taking you home from your delivery just as my mother was taking me
there to be delivered. That is when our mothers first met each other.
We were
unbelievably lucky for Dr. Mangold had been educated at the
Consider this: Would you prefer to be educated by the colleagues of Dr. Mangold as your mentors, or by the gospels of John, Luke, Mark, James, Matthew, Paul et alii, as insisted on by the Baptists and our Attorney General? Have you ever met a Baptist preacher who had studied any of the thousands of books, dissertations or articles by or about Dr. Mangold's colleagues? Click to see a short list.
Adolph Hitler
effectively destroyed the
Under Hitler, Jewish doctors were strictly prohibited under penalty of immediate execution from delivering Aryan children (whatever those are). Dr. Mangold also spent much time writing a book on medical procedures that would have become a standard college text but unfortunately died before completing it.
Your family lived on
Highway 61 and mine lived on
My mother strolled over to your home innumerable times with myself in tow, to visit with the two of you and your older brother. They took turns, acting as baby sitters for us. You and I once climbed the pear tree at the Patterson home, a few houses down from your house and your mother ordered us to get out of that tree before we fell out. You also tried to teach me the game Chinese Checkers in front of the coal-burning fireplace in your living room but it never made any sense to me. You, me, Charlie Wilson and Larry Williams had china berry wars with those little hard green balls that we pulled off the china berry tree from the Wade home behind your house. I was sorry to see you leave for you were surely the brightest kid on the block.
It seems that you have lost all memory of growing up in Mississippi in your early years. This is unremarkable for as there were no subsequent experiences in that town to re-enforce the earlier ones, then the earlier ones have not been preserved.
I recall your return visits to the Alexander home. In the mid-1950s Mr. Alexander built a second home next to his plantation house, a ranch style home. That was the Klan Klub House, as they called it. You will recall that it had a pool table in the large front room where Klansmen and their friends could go at will to shoot pool. When Kelly Drew held his Klan sermons, the pool table was moved out and rows of metal folding chairs were lined up for the Klansmen. You and I shot a game or two of pool there in our teenage years.
Perhaps you will pardon me if I was a little wary about your organization, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I was aware that they were spying on me as long ago as 1967. You can read of this incident in James Dickerson's book North To Canada or read an excerpt elsewhere on my web site. If a person comes forward to volunteer information or to stand examination without being asked to do so but is turned down, then he has good reason to be suspicious.
You do not understand what constitutes slander. 99% of the persons mentioned on my web log are dead. Dead people cannot be slandered. Moreover, slander is not slander if it is true. No one, either dead or alive has been slandered in my pages. I would never intentionally slander anyone.
My web log is my own personal property. You are free to visit it any time you wish. It is my personal artwork. If you do not like it then do not visit it. I did not invite you or anyone else to look at it, nor have I ever earned anything from it. It has no links to any commercial sites. You will also note that you have had the opportunity of making any sort of comment upon it.
There were two other incidents in which FBI officials slandered my name. Both of those occurred in 1971-1972 when I lived in Jackson. On one occasion I was arrested by Special Agent Joe Jackson and accused of robbing a bank. I was only held about 10 minutes, but believe me, it may as well have been 10 years for all the hostility and resentment it left with me. In a paper that I presented to the US Department of Justice in 1992, I described this incident and it was considered by the entire US Senate Judiciary Committee at that time. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Jackson resigned from his post. It took nearly 20 years to get some clarification on this issue but Mr. Jackson finally admitted that there was no excuse for his action at all.
There was a second incident when the agents circulated the rumor that I and Richard Abraham were "drug dealers". Neither Rick Abraham nor I ever owned, used, bought, sold or possessed any kind, sort or type of drugs, yet they smeared, slandered and libeled our own names big time. Those days are now over (knock on wood) and the resentment and hostility have been remedied and dissipated. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is just as much my own personal servant as it is to anyone else. You can read more of these incidents in Dickerson's book North To Canada or obtain them from the CSPANN network..
The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission kept up a steady barrage of lies, rumors, innuendo, whispers, gossip, complaints, misinformation, disinformation and non-information to many federal agencies. Most of it was probably ignored, yet some of it was bound to wind up in federal files. I believe that federal agencies did more or less the best job they could under the circumstances but it was always disconcerting when some of it surfaced. If it had not been for the FBI, no progress at all would ever have been made.
It is not against the law to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan any more than it is to be a Baptist or a Zoroastrian. It is not slanderous of anyone to suggest that he is a member of anything. In the 1960s and 70s, the US Attorney General maintained a 'subversives list', about 350 groups as I recall. All known branches of the Ku Klux Klan were on those lists. All persons seeking a position with any branch of the US military was required to sign a statement that he did not belong to any of those groups.
Those lists have now
been abolished and with good reason. America is a free country and
Americans are free to believe whatever it is that they choose to believe.
Americans are free to associate with any person or group that they choose to
associate with. If we do not allow people freedom of belief and association,
then we end up with such fiascoes as occurred at Waco, the Ruby Ridge shootout,
the Oklahoma City bombing and the Symbionese
Liberation Army crime spree. There are much better ways to deal with
these groups than by starting a war with them.
Movements occasionally
arise to outlaw certain groups, with little or no recognizance that
It does not matter at all what people believe. People believe in all sorts of weird things: tarot cards, chiropractics, ouija boards, Voodoo, astrology, Zen Buddhism, re-incarnation, UFOs, alien space invaders, the Big Bang theory, white supremacy, Dialectical Materialism, the Resurrection of the Dead, and who knows what else? It is not what people believe that is problematic: it is the things they do. As Attorney General Janet Reno put it: " Deeds are the coin of the realm; not words."
Moreover, such terms as 'subversive' or 'loyalty' are notoriously subjective; they can mean almost anything to anyone. They are in essence metaphysical terms and as such are nonsensical. They can be verified neither by logic nor empiricism and therefore are 'meaningless' concepts.
Rest assured, any information I learn about crime or murders in Mississippi, goes first gratis to the FBI. If they make no objection to it (and they never have), then and only then does it go on the Internet. It is a waste of time to report criminal activity to the State of Mississippi: it is more likely to conceal it than to investigate it.
I do not care what religion any one else believes in. Myself, I believe only in logic and empiricism: it's the way I was trained. Logic and empiricism are not really a philosophy (certainly not a religion) but only an uncertain set of standards as to what constitutes the validity or non-validity of propositions. If I had a Bible, it would be called The US Constitution and it would be prefaced by The Declaration of Independence.
However, I have made a mistake about Howard Treadway: I had him confused with Marcus Treadway, his brother. Marcus was a Klansman but I have no knowledge of Howard. I have heard that he was an educated and gentle man, unlikely to ever have been associated with the KKK. Their sister, Ruth Treadway Alexander was the leader of the Klan Lady's Auxiliary but she took part in many of the men's Klan activities also. Having relatives who led less than stellar lives can in no way reflect upon a person's character. If it did then all of us would be criminals for everyone, without exception, has miscreants in their family tree. This tenet is a well -known element of Baptist theology but one that just also happens to be true.
Byron Dela Beckwith was
such a hero to the Ku Klux Klan for killing Medgar Evers by shooting him in the
back, that everywhere he went in Mississippi, he was wined and dined by the
Klansmen. Beckwith visited every city, town, village, hamlet and
cross-roads store in the state to brag of his deed. When he came to
Hollandale, Mr. Alexander opened his home and his wallet to Beckwith.
Kelly Drew chauffeured him all around town to introduce him to local whites by
saying, "This is Byron Beckwith. This is the man who shot Medgar
Evers."
Anyone who would
associate with, make obeisance to, feed, house, aid,
abet and promote such a hoodlum as Beckwith has already slandered his own name
far more than anyone else possibly could. Kelly Drew Alexander, Sr., was
a class V criminal: extremely dangerous, ultra-violent, bestial, sadistic,
rabid and depraved, on a par with or beyond Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy or Richard Speck. By his own proud account, his
victims died in excruciating pain; shrieking, writhing, crying and
pleading. By his own account, even the bodies of his victims were
desecrated: hung up in public display, burned, torn apart or dumped in the
creek.
Medgar Evers was an
American national treasure of inestimable value; he devoted the final years of
his life to establish amity, kindness, friendship, equality, generosity,
education and humanity to humankind.
The Klansman was a national disgrace; war, violence, hatred, greed,
brutality, ignorance, sadism, prejudice and the rule of crime were under his
sponsorship.
You spent three summers on the Alexander plantation and never attended a single one of Klansman Alexander's weekly sermons to his Klan Kongregation at the Klan Klubhouse? OK. The references that you find objectionable to yourself on my web log have been removed. Moreover, the time line you cited makes it impossible for you to have been associated with the Klan in 1968 or at any later time. Such a suggestion was unfair and wrong. This is my apology.
No one, no matter who he is, can be 100% accurate in his claims. Every one makes mistakes. If a person can be 80% accurate, then that is good. If he can be 85% accurate then that is excellent. Anything beyond that is stellar. Baptists as well as Klansmen hold themselves to be infallible. They also hold the Bible to be literally true and likewise infallible. It is a central tenet of logical empiricism that no proposition can be held to be a valid one unless there is at least a thinkable instance in which the proposition is false. Truth and falsehood are not absolutes but rather a function of probability theory. Compare John Maynard Keynes: Probability.
According to Baptists,
they can never be wrong. According to logical empiricists, we can always
be wrong. Judge for yourself: which is a bigoted, prejudiced, biased, miseducated, naive, myopic being?
“Wovon
Mann nicht sprechen kan, daruber
muB mann schweigen.” Source: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico
Philosophicus.1921.
Nonetheless, with your training as a criminologist and your knowledge of the Alexanders, I feel certain that you could verify everything herein contained about Kelly Drew Alexander, the Senior. At the same time, it would be most unwise for you to attempt to do so, if you no longer have an official status.
"The Bible tells
us Jesus Christ and the thieves were crucified on a cross, not lynched as
stated by Mr. Sudduth." The verb 'to lynch' can be defined as a general or a
specific term. Some authors use it only to describe a death by hanging
from a rope. Others use it to include any sort of public execution.
When Clarence Thomas was
examined by the Senate Judiciary Committee for his appointment to the Supreme
Court; he repeatedly complained that he was the victim of a “high tech
lynching”, after Anita Hill’s account of
his sexual fantasies.
Ordinary language
philosophers would excuse his poetic license on the grounds that so long as
a person defines his terms, he is entitled to use language in any manner that
he sees fit.
At the same time, a
person who continuously uses language in non-standard definitions runs the risk
of being continuously misunderstood. His
observations are likely to be perceived as nonsense.
Anyone who uses his
language in non-standard meanings has created his own “private language” which
the rest of us do not understand.
In actual fact, Jesus was not nailed to a cross; the favored method of execution at the time was so horrible that it is rarely mentioned in print. The victims were impaled on a pole, inserted through the anus, and then planted upright. The victims were left to struggle and suffer for hours before finally expiring. A French researcher in the 19th century tried to duplicate crucifixions by nailing cadavers to a cross but it simply did not work; the bodies would all break free from the nails a short time after being erected.
Archimedes could have explained why crucifixions do not work: the foci of the nails would act as a fulcrum; the body would act as a lever placed 3 feet away. The average human body from 3 feet away would exert a far greater force against the fulcrum than perceived. The line between the nail and the center of the chest would act as a 3 foot crowbar, easily tearing the hand through at once or within a few minutes.
Also, bear in mind that the Iron Age is dated to have begun only a few centuries before Christ: whatever iron was available was too valuable and too brittle to have been used for the production of nails. Nails were not even thought of until the first wind-powered sawmills were erected along the coasts of Holland in the 16th century for the production of dimensional lumber.
For all the cruel and
unusual methods that governments have invented for torturing their citizens to
death, history simply does not record any other persons being crucified in the
manner described by the Bible. The guillotine, the sword, firing squads,
the gallows, impalement, garrotes, gas chambers, the electric chair, burning at
the stake, hanging, feeding to wild animals, lethal injections, drowning and
starving to death, staged auto accidents, typhus infected blankets, mustard
gas, Zyklon-B, hemlock, strychnine, napalm, hand grenades, dynamite, stoning to
death, surreptitiously feeding LSD, killing with dogs, throwing prisoners out
of helicopters, dragging and bull whipping to death, and cyanide are all
historical realities. Crucifixions are not. If crucifixions were a
viable method of execution, then FBI files would be chock full of solved and
unsolved cases. The tale is sheer Christian mythology.
The famed Spanish poet
and dramatist Garcia Lorca is reported to have been
executed by a form of impalement. He was
impaled with the muzzle of a 7mm Mauser rifle jammed
into his rectum. After hours of this
torture the Fascists finally pulled the trigger, blowing him apart.
A practice akin to
impalement still exists today and can be found in FBI files. In 1996,
Without modern medicine,
Mr. louima would certainly have died in about 3 days.
Click to read more about impalement.
There is a impassable gulf between logical empiricism and faith.
From: Another family member of one slandered by Sudduth
My name is Danny Tyler, son of Upton and Ruby Tyler, and I am writing this
letter in response to "Murder in Mississippi and the Ku Klux Klan."
written by Charles Felder Sudduth. I guess the most appalling thing about this
article is the lack of respect he has for my deceased father; he referred to
him as "old man Tyler." My father was a very good man and worked very
hard to provide for his family. I will be forever grateful for all he did for
us. Sudduth wrote about a dam that was constructed about 1952 by caterpillars
driven by Houston, Larry, Tom, my father, and "Coon" Tyler. I would
have enjoyed seeing this because the driver that he mentioned as
"Coon" was not even born; he entered this world in 1954. My father
and I have never been members of the First Baptist Church in Hollandale. My
father is deceased at this time, but we are both members of the Hollandale
Baptist Church. I am not a member of the Ku Klux Klan, nor have I ever been a
member. I have learned in my life that there is good in all people and not to
judge people by their skin color. Sudduth referred to my brother, Houston, in
this article as an idiot and a murderer of black people. Well, he can call him
what he wants to, but he has never killed anyone, and, as far as getting his fingers
cut off, it is really none of Sudduth's business, nor
did he pick up my brother's fingers. My brother Larry,
picked up his fingers and took them to the King's
REPLY
Pardon me. I do not remember you at all except that Houston mentioned he had a brother that he called 'Coon'. You are the only one who mentioned your proper name. No disrespect to your father was intended. Houston in his characteristic humor once remarked about his father, "He's the only man I ever knew who could roll a cigarette with one hand while sitting on a mule in a 40 mile an hour cross-wind." Your nickname and the mention of your father have been deleted from the site.
The winch line cut off 9 fingers, only the little finger on his left hand was spared. I was on a different part of the farm when it happened. Larry, me and Mr. Bueker searched for the missing fingers under the dozer after Houston was taken to the hospital. The doctors at Kings Daughters were able to reattach 2 fingers to serve as a thumb and forefinger on his right hand. Both his thumbs were too badly mashed to be used. It was a terrible accident and all of us had the greatest sympathy for his loss. Some times, we made light of his tragedy in an attempt to perk up his spirits.
From: Pat Brooks
THIS IS WHAT YOU GET FROM A DRAFT DODGER THAT DOESN'T KNOW WHAT HE TALKING
ABOUT. SINCE HE IS SO UNHAPPY IN
REPLY
Thank you for your
comments.
From: A South Mississippian
Sudduth's commentary on Mississippi contains so many generalizations and ignorant statements about Mississippi and Southern Baptists that it is laughable. John the Baptist and the writer of The Gospel of John are different people first of all. He repeatedly linked the KKK with the Baptist church, which is ludicrous. North Mississippi sounds like a scary place and he certainly does not speak for the best in this great state. The best thing this "story" has going for it is the verbosity of the author. Hopefully, few people will ever see it. If Mr. Sudduth hates Mississippi so much, he might consider Arkansas. This guy is a real loser.
REPLY
Thank you.
If I ever again set one foot outside the State of Mississippi, I will never
come back.
From: Julie Cuniglio
I was raised in Hollandale, Mississipi, by parents who taught me from the youngest age that we were all created equal. This was not the safest opinion to have at that time. Our home, the home my father built, caught fire twice during my childhood under suspicious circumstances. I was known, from the earliest age, as a liberal and troublemaker for my views of equality for all men and women. My sisters and I had the only 'integrated' birthday parties and I was well known for having climbed over a fence at the age of 7 (the fence that divided the white section of town from the 'colored') and organizing an impromptu beauty pageant starring the friends I'd make across that fence, friends who were, as you might guess, African-American. At the stores I refused to allow the clerks to 'push' me to the head of the line ahead of the African American shoppers, and, as a teenager, my best friend, Pam, was African-American. My grandmother took in a local family who was having financial problems, gave them a section of her property, and the small home my great-grandmother had lived, and died, in. They became her closest friends and she 'adopted' their children as her own grandchildren until her health failed and she was forced to move into my great-aunt's home, where she eventually died. My grandmother's name was Nell Mathews. She was the widow of Ace Mathews, my grandfather. The grandfather that helped shape the views that turned me into the activist I eventually became. The grandfather who taught me, from my earliest age, that no man was worth less than another. I was thrown out of the Methodist Church's Vacation Bible School, at age 5, for telling the teacher that if "God loved us all" 'us all' included 'colored' people. Picking me up on the front steps of the Methodist Church was the proudest moment of my mother's life. She, too had been booted from a local church, for teaching God's love for all men, women and children, of all colors, to her Sunday School students. Ace Mathews' legacy doesn't stop with my mother or me. My son is a Social Justice Scholar. He has worked tirelessly, since the age of 11, with the homeless population in our Texas town. He plans to go into government service, with the hopes of changing the laws that discriminate against the poor and result in prison populations that are are nearly all minority. My daughter studies government; she, too, has worked with the homeless since the age of 12, and hopes to use her education to help the economically disadvantaged climb from beneath the poverty line into a position of equality in their communities (for those of you who are as uneducated as 'author' Charles Sudduth, you should be aware: a large percentage of the economically disadvantaged are minorities.) My sister works full-time for an organization in Mississippi that seeks to record and honor its rich blues heritage, organizing concerts by blues greats and the next generation of blues greats (again, for those of you less educated, this is not a predominently caucasian population.) One of Ace Mathews' grandsons is a minister in an integrated Mississippi church, and another is a missionary working overseas with decidedly non-caucasian populations, helping them find their way out of the poverty they were born into. The most tragic fact is that your organization, an organization that, seemingly, has the noblest of intentions, did not even bother to verify the validity of what you're publishing, or the credentials of 'author' Charles Sudduth. My sister spoke with Charles Sudduth's mother recently. She was horrified at the lies her son continues to write. She was ESPECIALLY horrified to discover that he was doing so on a web site registered, ILLEGALLY in her name. You are promoting the fiction of a man who would place his own 70+ year old mother in jeopardy in order to create a few moments in the limelight. The last web provider he published this nonsense on dropped him QUICKLY when contacted by the office of the Attorney General of Mississippi. It seems that slander is a crime, even in Mississippi. I appreciate and honor your organization's mission statement. However, you will not promote your cause, albeit a good cause, by slandering Ace Mathews, who was a good and noble man. So, I am requesting, politely, that you remove his slanderous meanderings from your site. If you do not comply, I will take legal action against your organization. As an activist well-versed in the laws related to the operation of 501(c)3 organizations, I can assure you that the Southern Regional Council does not want to defend lawsuits that could threaten future grant dollars. I will not hestitate to research and contact each and every sponsoring and granting supporter of the Southern Regional Council to advise them that you are publishing and promoting unsubstantiated and slanderous fiction on this site. I will further advise them that you will soon be tied up in legal action and that any grant/advertising dollars would be better spent elsewhere. It's very easy to publish sensationalized fiction on your site. Dancing on the grave of a dead man, who cannot speak to defend himself, is an act of cowardice (this is not surprising, since Charles Sudduth's greatest claim to fame amongst those who grew up with him was that he was a draft dodger who spent most of this time in trouble with the law, including, presumably, my grandfather, who was the 'law' of a tiny town located between Hollandale and the largest city in the county, Greenville.) It is thoughtless and cruel to the generations who followed this great man and dedicated their lives to the very cause you claim to support...equality for all men and women. I'm going to presume, for the moment, that this was a grave and unintentional oversight that, I am certain, you will quickly remedy. Julie Cuniglio.
REPLY
Thank you for your
comments.
It is
astounding to learn that Attorney General Moore had the temerity to delete my
web site at Yahoo Geocities. Public officials, like historians, need to
grow a thick skin as there are always going to be persons who revile them as
much as other persons will revere them. Where does Mike Moore obtain the
authority to censor my own personal research? Where does any political
official get the right to dictate what historians shall write? I never
thought of Mr. Moore as anything more than a buffoon and a political demagogue
but this is outrageous. If Mr. Moore wants to control what historians write,
then he should write his own history, not dictate what I write in mine; I am
not his stenographer. If Mr. Moore does not wish to be perceived as
a buffoon, then he ought not to act like one, by erasing my website. His
action violates so many aspects of civil rights law that I do not know where to
start counting. His action is not merely a tortious act but may be a
criminal one as well. Slander is a tort but theft is a crime. Computer
hacking is also a crime in most jurisdictions; no one needs any more computer
hackers. Destroying the work of a historian is also a crime.
Where is due process? ("No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.") Where is freedom of speech? Mr. Moore looks like a criminal, hiding his own name from public scrutiny. Mr. Moore was sworn to fight crime, not cover up the evidence of it. When did the Mississippi legislature give censorship rights to Attorney Moore? I never urged any action against Mr. Moore except to advise people not to vote for persons whom they do not like.
Hinds County Sheriff
Malcolm MacMillan telephoned my own 82-year-old mother to threaten her with my
arrest if I did not stop exposing the criminal activities of Mississippi
officials. When she passed away in 2005, one of the causes of death was
listed as "hypertension" no doubt exacerbated by nauseating bully
fart MacMillan and others of his stench.
At the age of
21-years-old Kathleen
Sudduth volunteered for the first all-female unit of the US Marine Corps in
1943 at the height of WWII. When she
retired to
I could have told scumbag dick-breath
MacMillan that trying to threaten a US Marine, male or female, is a waste of
time. If
The policy of harassing
one’s relatives comes directly form Mike Moore’s own personal website where the
Attorney General advocates that when the State has no legal recourse against a
person, then State officials should threaten that person’s relatives or his
minister to cow that person into submission or compliance. If that is not the hall mark of a lawless
police state, then what is?
Unfortunately I do not
have a minister.
The Ku Klux Klan also had the exact same policy. If they could not force a person to accept their own obnoxious policy, then they would try to frighten or intimidate his friends, relatives or ministers into compliance.
There are dozens of Ku
Klux Klan and Baptist websites stored on
My web pages reside on a
computer in
His actions are reminiscent or a duplication of the actions carried out during the massive book burnings on the advent of German Nazis during the ascendancy of those murderers prior to World War II. Nazis held public burnings of the papers and books of poets, historians, philosophers, scientists and especially Jewish writers. How could anyone be so vicious or stupid? His action only shows himself to be a barbarian with closed eyes.
In the 1960s Erle
Murdering innocent
people in
FROM: Rick Abraham
Hey Charlie,
I thought your responses were good. You are welcome to put mine on your
website.
It is understandably hard for people to imagine that their parents and loved ones could have done bad things. But the fact is, people who were callous and brutal in their treatment of others could also be loving parents and capable of acts of kindness. That's what I saw growing up in Mississippi and that's what I see in the world today.
Your responders are ill informed if they assume the FBI would have known
about all the murders or other acts of brutality that occurred. They are also
wrong to assume that the FBI would have done something had they known.
Here are some facts:
As congressional hearings revealed, the FBI was sometimes part of the problem
and participated in efforts to undermine the civil rights movement, including
Martin Luther King Jr.
Neither did the government always object to the Ku Klux Klan. The then Director of the Mississippi Selective Service told me that he had no problem with a member of the Klan being on a draft board. This was when I told him about Kelly Drew Alexander's (Sr) alleged participation in the KKK
A Leland policeman and former KKK member testified in federal court, just as
you stated, that Alexander was at Klan meetings and even ran such meetings. I
was in the courtroom at the time and had been told the same earlier thing in
the presence of the police chief.
I don't have information about the murders you referenced, but I too heard such
stories growing up. I heard them from friends and relatives I believed. We know
that horrible things happened, some of which have been well documented. It is
certainly believable that atrocities were not always reported or investigated,
especially when political and religious leaders were supporting segregation and
condoning violence. In many respects, they did much more harm than avowed
members of the KKK.
People are wrong to dismiss you as a "draft dodger." People who
dodged the draft were those who got the student and medical deferments that
money could buy. You and I didn't "dodge" the draft. We refused to
fight in a war we thought was wrong . Instead, we
wanted to work to make Mississippi and this country a better place. That was
something the KKK members and sympathizers on the draft boards didn't want.
I think we are all victims of
So do good research and keep writing .
Rick Abraham
REPLY
Thanks Rick.
Rick Abraham was from Clarksdale, Mississippi but studied philosophy at UCLA before returning home to become one of the very few native white Mississippians to have joined both the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. There must have been at least 3 or 4 others.
Rick perceived that the
Vietnam War was as mindless, futile and criminal enterprise that this country
had ever started. So he formed his own private anti-war counseling
service to advise people how to leave the
How anyone could accept
that criminal enterprise of the Vietnam War but characterize anyone as opposed
to that criminality, brutality and senselessness as a criminal also is
unfathomable to my mind. The criminals
were those who started, financed and supported the Vietnam War, not at all
those who tried to stop it. Ignorance in
Rick, myself and Ben
Jackson worked together for almost 20 years, taking down the biggest and most
dangerous trees in
Rick was a top-notch high climber but slow as cold molasses. When it was Rick's turn to take down a tree, he always timed his speed so that when he finished with his part, the men on the ground had already done all the work of loading: there was nothing left for him to do except enjoy the ride home.
Ben Jackson looked like Mikhail Baryshnikov transplanted from the ballet stage to the tree tops. He took down trees so fast that it was dangerous to attempt moving anything while he was aloft. Benjamin made both of us look like clumsy clod-hoppers. If white men can't jump, then they can't climb either.
When Rick went up a tree, he demanded a $1000 in safety gear just to start: hard hat, safety glasses, ear plugs, leather gloves, the latest tree saddle, lineman's strap, mountain climbers' rope, carabiners, knee pads, steel-toed, knee high loggers' boots, his own set of custom designed, aluminum framed tree spurs padded with foam rubber and the littlest chain saw.
An ardent environmentalist and conservationist, if Rick found a bird nest with an egg in a tree that we were hired to cut down, all action had to cease until the chick was hatched and had flown the nest. He exasperated me to no end with that qualm but it was not wise to cross paths with Rick Abraham. He had no problem with eating 4 chicken eggs for breakfast; what was the logical difference between destroying 4 chicken eggs and destroying one bird's egg to get the job done?
Ben went up a tree with no more than a rope and big chain saw. Ben never bothered to turn his saw off once he started to work; he left it running the whole time, hanging from his belt to dangle about his leg.
But Rick was the one toughest, most fearless and obstinate civil rights worker in all Mississippi: he stood up to everyone who came along, grilling Federal agents, the Governor, the Attorney General, corporate managers, Bill Burgin, Fred St. Claire, the State Legislature, draft boards, hounding the Ku Klux Klan and who knows who else. Rick ran after the Klan when I ran away from them. The man had a morality that was made of cast iron.
Both Rick and I were educated in college as philosophers yet our respective philosophies were almost diametrically opposed. It seemed to me that Rick's philosophy was sheer altruism; mine aspired to be sheer logic. Yet, both view points reach the same conclusion: there is only one race, and that is the human race; all persons ought to be treated with the same fairness, respect and dignity that anyone else obtains.
In the early 1970s, Mr. Alexander drafted a black civil rights worker from Greenville, Charles Jenkins, who refused to be inducted and avowed that Alexander had targeted him on account of his civil rights work. I already knew all about Klansman Alexander and gave all my info to Rick. Rick then hounded Klansman Alexander, tracked him down, dug up witnesses against him, hauled them to court and defended the civil rights worker. Rick was only 23 years old and had neither legal training nor knowledge of courtroom procedure yet he won exoneration for Charles Jenkins and then had the Klansman removed from his position. After the trial, Mr. Jenkins soon vanished: we never heard from him again, apparently one of Mississippi's many desaparecidos. When the Klan does not get its way in court, it is likely to find another means to get even.
In the 1970s the State Welfare Department was staffed entirely by white people. There were virtually no black people employed by the state government except as janitors, garbage collectors or other menial positions that no white people would accept. The case workers of the Welfare Department were rude, stingy, racists who often denied welfare rights to black people.
Rick demanded of Governor Cliff Finch that the Department hire black women to serve as case workers. As Rick pointed out, who could better evaluate the needs of black women than black women? When Finch refused, Rick launched his own personal investigation into the Department's director, Fred St. Claire. Rick squeezed St. Claire so hard that the Director nearly had a nervous breakdown. St. Claire could not leave his office but be confronted with Rick and a half dozen demonstrators (including myself), demanding to know why he had a son and daughter on the welfare payroll but could not hire any black women.
St. Claire claimed that only persons holding a Master's degree in Sociology could be hired as case workers and that there were no such black women in Mississippi. Upon Rick's further investigation, St. Claire himself had no degrees at all but was only an ex-Air Force officer. When confronted with this fact, Governor Finch then arranged for him to be given an honorary degree from a Florida university, but Rick soon exposed that deception also.
Governor Finch then offered Rick a lucrative job with the department just to shut him up but Rick turned that down as well.
At last, St. Claire cracked, and pointed his own grubby finger at state Senator William G. Burgin as having taken some $800,000 in kickbacks from the welfare department. Rick gave his info to the FBI who convicted Burgin in Federal District Court, resulting in an 18 month prison sentence, an order to repay the $800,000 plus a fine, the loss of his license to practice law and his ejection from the Mississippi Senate. Burgin, President pro tem of the Mississippi Senate and one of the heads of the State Sovereignty Commission, had been the second most powerful man in all Mississippi. Nowhere, in any of the law reporting periodicals is it recorded that it was Rick Abraham (only the Dept. of Justice) who ate his lunch.
The saddest thing and
the harshest punishment is to lose one's citizenship
to
As a result of Rick
Abraham's action, the State Welfare Department was soon staffed in fair part by
black people. Shortly there after, the state government began to consider
other black people for jobs in all other departments.
Rick and I shared a home
in south
Rems Barber, Barbara Phillips, Ed
King, Dick Harger, Susan Weill,
Frank Parker, Ken Lawrence, Jan Hillegas, Rudi
Shields, Bill Rusk, Muffin Chiz, Allison Steiner,
John Dittmer, Ernst Borinsky, Kay Fortenberry,
Charles and Mary Ramberg, David Ingerbretsen,
Cynthia Stewart, Bill Paulsen, Henry Kirksey, Ron
Welch and too many others to mention.
Rems Barber was surely one of the
greatest civil rights workers in the state.
He came to
Once
Rick organized a boycott of Sunflower Grocery stores for Cesar Chavez's United
Farm Workers Union, trying to force them to stop selling
After ruining the
aspirations of the most powerful politicians in
