About The Project

Cold Cases in Louisiana & Mississippi – LSU Cold Case Project

The Manship School of Mass Communication works to bring closure to the families and the nation for the unsolved Klan-related homicides in Louisiana and southern Mississippi during the Civil Rights era.

Awards

IRE Award Winner

Students from LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication and the Southern University Law Center won a national investigative reporting prize

Featured Case

Beating of Curtis Harris & Wilbur Lee Henderson

In 1962, two Black men – Curtis Harris and Wilber Lee Henderson – were beaten by five Concordia Parish police officers…

Featured Case

E.D. Morace

E.D. Morace was a Klansman from Ferriday, LA, who became an FBI informant. One Klansman described Morace as the head “hatchet man” for the Ferriday Klan.

Featured Case

Ernest Buchanan Parker

Ernest Buchanan Parker was a Natchez, Miss., Klansman who informants said was a member of the Silver Dollar Group, a secret Klan cell believed responsible for multiple racial murders during the 1960s as well as for the murder of a former Klansman.

Featured Case

Elden Glenn Hester

Elden Glenn Hester was a White Knight in Franklin County, Miss., when he was recruited into the Silver Dollar Group by Raleigh Jackson “Red” Glover, head of the SDG.

LSU Cold Case Project for Louisiana and Mississippi Unsolved Cases Hosts:

Over 175K Pages
of FBI Investigative Findings on Regional Cases
60+ Photos
160+ Cases
in DOJ Cold Case Initiative
36+ Stories






Tommie Lee Jones

Tommie Lee Jones (1936-2007) was a Klansman from Natchez, Miss., who became one of the earliest and most violent members of the secret Klan cell known as the Silver Dollar…

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The Disappearance of Joseph Edwards

Joseph Edwards disappeared in Concordia Parish in July 1964. FBI records, a lengthy investigation by the Concordia Sentinel in Ferriday, LA, a book by LSU Cold Case Project associate director…

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Murder of Frank Morris

Frank Morris was 51 years old when Klansmen torched his shoe shop in Ferriday, LA, on December 10, 1964. He had been sleeping in a back room when he was…

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Ernest Avants

Ernest Avants was a Klansme=an who was convicted in 2003 for the murder of Ben Chester White, a 67-year-old farmhand in Adams County, Miss., who was slain in 1966. The…

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Browse Our Database

Louisiana Cold Case Gallery

The pictures we gather throughout the investigations.


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