JACKSON, Miss.—Southwest Mississippi was a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity in 1964, and a man now on trial in the deadly attacks on two black teenagers that year was a frequent participant in Klan rallies, according to two retired investigators who testified Friday.
Reesie L. Timmons of the FBI and Donald Butler of the state Department of Public Safety testified that they saw James Ford Seale, wearing a robe but with his face exposed, participating in public gatherings of the white supremacist group. Butler said Seale once photographed him and another law enforcement officer as they watched a Klan rally in Natchez.
“It was a harassment mechanism by some in the Klan,” Butler said, adding that the officers who were photographed took Seale’s camera and ruined the film.
Seale, 71, has pleaded not guilty to federal kidnapping and conspiracy charges and has denied being in the Klan. Prosecutors are trying to prove that he was part of a Klan group that attacked and killed 19-year-olds Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore on May 2, 1964.
The badly decomposed bodies of the victims were pulled from a murky backwater of the Mississippi River more than two months later and more than 70 miles from where they disappeared.
Part of Moore’s corpse—legs and pelvis clad in blue jeans and his feet in black sneakers—was found July 12, 1964, according to testimony this week. Part of Dee’s badly decomposing corpse was found nearby the same day.
Investigators identified Moore by his Alcorn A&M College dormitory key, his golden stretch-band wristwatch and a belt buckle with the initial “M.” They identified Dee by the waterlogged draft card in his wallet.
Moore’s brother, Thomas Moore of Colorado Springs, Colo., also took the stand on Friday during the fifth day of testimony in Seale’s trial. Thomas Moore said that the brother he called “Nub” was 13 months younger than him and was a quiet person who stayed out of trouble.
Though he maintained a calm demeanor on the witness stand, Moore said he still has nightmares about the violent way his brother died.
“I would say it motivated me to be all I could be,” said Thomas Moore, 63, who served 30 years in the Army and earned two bachelor’s degrees.
Moore testified that his brother lost his four top front teeth after being kicked in the face with an opponent’s steel cleats during a high school football game.
A retired Navy diver testified this week that a skull his team pulled from the Mississippi backwater in October 1964 was missing four front teeth. It was found near the spot where Charles Moore’s other remains had been discovered earlier.
Jurors on Friday also heard excerpts from a letter filled with racial epithets that Seale wrote to his hometown newspaper in 1964. The attack on the then-recently enacted Civil Rights Act, was published July 23, 1964, in the weekly Franklin Advocate.
In the letter to what was then a pro-segregation newspaper, Seale called on fellow white Mississippians to wage a holy war against integration.
“The time is here and passing fast for the people of this great nation to fight and die for what is right,” Seale wrote. “If you choose to live and die under communism dictatorship, may God have mercy on your souls.”
Mary Lou Webb operated the newspaper in 1964 with her husband David and she has been editor and publisher since he died four years ago. She testified Friday that the letter was a paid advertisement. Webb said she did not remember Seale bringing the letter to the newspaper, but the paper’s policy was to accept only items that were personally brought to the office.
Webb said that Seale acknowledged his Klan membership to her and her husband in the 1960s.
Timmons was based at the FBI office in McComb from late 1964 until he retired in 1980. McComb was rocked by church bombings and other acts of racial violence during the 1960s, and Timmons said his territory included several counties in southwest Mississippi—including Franklin County, where Seale lived and Dee and Moore disappeared.
Timmons testified that when he knew about Klan rallies, he’d park his “old, beat up brown Plymouth” by the highway exit he knew the Klansmen would take and he’d sit in his car and take notes about the people and vehicles he saw. He said he parked in the open “so they would know I knew what was going on.”
Timmons identified Seale in the courtroom Friday and testified that he had seen Seale at several Klan rallies—at least twice in a robe.
Seale sat still and seldom looked at any of the witnesses Friday.
Butler, who is now deputy director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, testified that he and Timmons sometimes worked together to investigate Klan activities.
“The hotbed of Klan activity was in Adams and Franklin counties,” Butler testified.
Butler testified that he saw Seale at a Klan rally during the 1960s in Natchez, the Adams County seat.
“He had a white sheet on and the face was open,” Butler said.
Testimony resumes Monday, and prosecutors say they expect to wrap up their case early next week. Defense attorneys listed seven witnesses they might call. Seale is not expected to testify.
