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LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE ta 60,000 members in 253 Councils throughout Mississippi.” The Councils openly promoted the cause of segregation through legal means and did not officially advocate violence. ”* However, at least one Council flyer of the time reflects the organization’s use of intimidation and the fact the threat of violence was sanctioned. 7° The Councils attempted to have an effect on the Till matter. During Hugh Steven Whitaker’s research in 1963, he interviewed the ‘jurors who rendered the acquittal of Bryant and Milam in Till’s death and leamed that every juror had been visited by members of the Council to make sure they (the jurors) voted “the nght way”. 30 5. Other Significant Events in 1955: On May 7, 1955, Willie George Washington Lee, a black minister in the town of Belzoni, Mississippi (located approximately twenty-three miles south of Indianola, Sunflower County, in neighboring Humphreys County), and the first black person to register to vote in the Humphreys County, was murdered. Lee had been killed with a shotgun. No one was arrested or charged for the crime. Humphreys County Sheriff Lil . Shelton made public statements that the metal fragments in Lee's jaw were probably fillings from his teeth. A coroner's jury ruled that Lee had died of bleeding from a wound caused by No. 3 buckshot. *! 3? On May 31, 1955, the United States Supreme Court issued an implementation decree calling on the states to desegregate the schools with "all deliberate speed". Within sixty days black parents had petitioned school boards in Clarksdale, Jackson, Natchez, Vicksburg and Yazoo City to gain * thid,25to26 ® Ibid. 360 9 thid 191 : » Hugh Steven Whitaker, “A Case Study in Southern Justice — The Emmett Till Case”, (Master’s Thesis; Florida State University, 1963), 154 ** Let the People Decide, Black Freedom and White Resistance Movements in Sunflower County, Mississippi, 1945 —~ 1986, J. Todd Moye, 2004, 30 * Hugh Steven Whitaker, “A Case Study in Southern Justice - The Emmett Till Case”, (Master's Thesis, Florida State University, 1963), 82 to 84 { 17 — ibe 8 8Le LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE This document contains neither recommendations nor conclusions of the FBI. It is the property of the FBI and is loaned to your agency, it and its Contents are Hot Lo be distributed outside your agency. ee eee ee