8/24/2023 0 Comments Concordia sentinel newspaperThe Department of Justice and the FBI say they are conducting ongoing investigations into the Morris case. In an interview with Nelson, Spencer denies those allegations. Nelson published the story Wednesday morning outlining the the allegations against Spencer. With the help of FBI documents Nelson received through Freedom of Information requests and from the Syracuse College of Law Cold Case Justice Initiative, and extensive interviews with those who knew Morris or about the case, he was able to piece together the story, ultimately naming a person suspected of being involved: Arthur Leonard Spencer, 71, of Rayville, La. Nelson is a member of the Civil Rights Cold Case Project, a group of journalists, filmmakers, law schools and other organizations created in 2008 by Paperny Films in Canada and the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, Calif. To date, every civil rights murder case that has been reopened and successfully prosecuted was the direct result of an investigation initiated by a journalist. The project reporters have already produced information in high-profile cases that prosecutors have used to build criminal cases against killers and conspirators who had walked free for more than 40 years. In October 2008, Congress passed the Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, to provide the Department of Justice and FBI millions of dollars to investigate these cases. that led to the federal trial and conviction of Seale, for the 43-year-old murder of African-Americans Henry Hezekiah and Charles Eddie Moore, two 19-year-olds from the Meadville, Miss., area.Ī month after Seale was indicted in January 2007, the FBI announced a new cold case initiative and published a shortlist of about 100 civil rights era cases that it planned to reprobe. In 2007, Ridgen published a documentary for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Ridgen, a filmmaker from Toronto who reported this story for NPR, helped to spearhead the project with Vancouver-based Paperny Films, and the Berkeley, Calif.-based Center for Investigative Reporting. It is still in publication as of 2010.The Frank Morris case is just one of many civil rights era cold cases that journalists like Stanley Nelson and David Ridgen are investigating as part of The Civil Rights Cold Case Project, which is an unprecedented collaboration of journalists from across the media spectrum, created in the aftermath of the trial of former Klansman James Ford Seale. In 1966, Percy Rountree, Jr., sold the paper to Sam Hanna, a well-known local journalist, who moved its operations from Vidalia to the neighboring town of Ferriday. Upon returning from World War I, Rountree’s son Percy Rountree, Sr., took over as manager and editor. Rountree, patriarch of a family of north Louisiana newspaper publishers. The Concordia Sentinel’s founder was Josiah L. Fiction, including condensed classics, was printed for readers of all ages, while a fashion column appealed to women. Other columns featured short essays on miscellaneous social issues. News from the nation’s capital was highlighted in a “Washington Sidelights” column. Local reporting covered the advent of Prohibition in Louisiana, the establishment of farmers’ cooperative unions, activities of the Concordia Progressive League and district levee board, the social and economic effects of the boll weevil blight on the region, and the north Louisiana oil boom. It reported a mix of local, national, and international news. Published weekly in eight pages, the Concordia Sentinel was the official journal of Concordia Parish. Its population at that time was more than three-fourths African American. Located in the agriculturally rich bottomlands of the Mississippi River, the parish was closely tied to the cotton-based economy of nearby Natchez, Mississippi, during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Concordia Sentinel was founded in 1882 in Vidalia, Louisiana, the seat of Concordia Parish in rural northeast Louisiana.
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