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Civil rights cold cases are heating up around the country. This includes the state of Minnesota -- where the granddaughter of a 1966 victim wants the FBI to take another look at her Mississippi relative's death.

Since the FBI announced late last November that its agents seek to interview next of kin of those who might have been victims of hate-crime based attacks during the civil rights era, as the agency's cold case initiative project, Nina Zachary-Black said she has tried to get the FBI's attention and cooperation.

But before the FBI will take action on a cold case, a victim's name must get on the cold case list, and this has not happened so far, said Minnesota teacher who is the granddaughter of Adlena Hamlett, a voting rights activist killed in a late afternoon car wreck on Jan. 12, 1966 in the Mississippi Delta, at the age of 78.

Like her granddaughter, Hamlett was a schoolteacher. Her best friend, Birdia Keglar, also a well-known voting rights advocate and a business woman, was killed in the same wreck. While several Keglar family members have been interviewed by the FBI, at their request, no one from the FBI had ever knocked on Zachary-Black's door to ask about her grandmother.

Keglar family members, too, say they are dissatisfied so far with the FBI's refusal to add Birdia Keglar's name to the cold case list.

Zachary-Black says she took the initiative to heart and contacted the FBI in December to talk about her grandmother, Adlena. But the answer she received from an agent of the Minneapolis FBI office, she says, was "stunning."

"The agent demanded a police report from Mississippi in order to prove my grandmother's death was civil rights related. Back then, many of the highway patrol were members of the Klan -- and they weren't about to report my grandmother's death in a truthful manner."

"I said to the agent, this is a cold case -- what could be colder than this?" But the agent responded that she wanted to know why Hamlett's granddaughter had waited so long to report this murder.

"I told her we wrote to the Justice Department very early on and never got a reply," Zachary-Black said.

Robert Keglar, Birdia Keglar's son, says that his family also tried to contact the Justice Department about his mother's death soon after she was killed, but got no answer.

"What else could we have done to report this crime?" Keglar asks. "Local authorities sure wouldn't listen to us." * * *

Murder came in waves and hit all ages as the intensity of civil rights activities grew in the mid and late 1960s. Birdia Beatrice Clark Keglar, 58, a voting rights activist, was involved with forming a local NAACP chapter in Tallahatchie County.

Keglar was the first black person to vote in Tallahatchie County since the end of Reconstruction. Several months earlier, Hamlett was hanged in effigy for her voter registration activities.

Their car was reportedly forced off the road in Sidon, a small town near Greenwood in Leflore County, as they returned from a civil rights meeting in Jackson, said Robert Keglar, who was first told about his mother's death by a close friend who claimed to have witnessed the accident.

"Even if the car was just forced off the road, that should be investigated. Wouldn't that be attempted murder? But I think that more happened than that," Keglar said.

Family members representing Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett make these additional points:

--This was not the first time the two women had been chased, Robert Keglar states. This point is also made by the wife of the car's driver, Grafton Gray. Her husband had also been chased while driving on his own, she states. Gray's surviving second wife (who was married to Gray after the accident) states, "He would not tell me anything about it, nothing at all. I could tell that he was still afraid to talk. He had told me about other times Klansmen tried to run him off the road, but he would say nothing about this accident. It affected him greatly."

--Family members were kept away from the accident scene. Keglar said the local district attorney visited his Charleston home that night to tell him of the accident. The prosecutor said a drunk driver had hit their car, forcing it from the road and killing both women. The prosecutor also warned Keglar to stay home and not go to the accident scene, he said. But, despite this warning, Keglar immediately went to the site, a small town well known for Klan activities. And while doing his own investigation and talking to witnesses, Keglar says he was told his mother and her friend were taken from the car and murdered.

--The Keglars also want the death of Mrs. Keglar's son to be investigated. James "Sonny Boy" Keglar was home from the military, trying to learn more about his mother's death and had contacted the FBI. He died in a fire in his home after he was released from the Clarksdale jail in early morning hours, Robert Keglar said.

--Family members question the testimony of an "eye-witness." Richard L. Simpson, 27, of Massachusetts, a white SNCC volunteer who was reported as seriously injured, was not allowed any black visitors in the Greenwood hospital, Robert Keglar said. "We tried to visit him to find out what happened, but the hospital did not treat black people and would not let us into the hospital." Simpson was found and questioned by the FBI. His statement, that he was asleep in the back of the car when the accident occurred, leads Keglar and others to question how Simpson's report could be taken seriously. "How can you be asleep and be an eye-witness at the same time?" Zachary-Black asks. * * *

Both families have had years to think about what happened to their relatives -- time to come up with possible reasons why they were killed:

Zachary-Black asserts the murder of her grandmother, Adlena Hamlett, could have been prompted by her own father's well-known hatred of the late U.S. Senator James O. Eastland and her father's political activism, as well.

"When he [James Black, a school principal] heard about Adlena's murder, my father wept and said that Eastland had finally gotten to him by murdering Adlena. My father often collided with the senator, who was a noted racist."

Zachery-Black said her father tried hard to get someone to go to the site but by the time her grandfather, Berry Hamlett, got to the scene, everything was cleaned up. Officers used hoses, her grandfather said, adding there was nothing left to see.

Hamlett's granddaughter said she knew something was wrong after viewing her grandmother's body at the Fox funeral home in Charleston. "It was apparent that body parts had been severed, indicating possible Ku Klux Klan involvement, she said.

Zachary-Black said that funeral home personnel told her and her brother it would be better for the caskets to stay closed. But her brother demanded he see inside the casket and told her that her grandmother's head appeared detached from her body.

Lila Hamlett, Adlena's youngest daughter, reports she also saw her mother's body at the funeral home and said there were gloves lying across Adlena's body but there were no hands in the gloves.

"I have wanted this to be investigated since she died. I've been recently thinking about it and have hoped something will happen while I'm still living." Zackary-Black turned 75 on Nov. 15, 2009.

Gwen Daily, Grafton Gray's great niece, recalls her uncle was taken to the Mound Bayou hospital and suffered emotionally afterwards. "He was never the same."

Dailey recalls that she could tell her father was suspicious of what happened to his brother and to the others who were injured or killed. "My great-uncle was already a quiet man. He received under-handed threats while in the hospital to keep quiet about ‘what happened,' my father learned.

"Employees and visitors would come into his room and tell him to ‘be careful,' but not in a caring way. Wh

Keywords: civil rights, cold cases, Birdia Keglar, Adlena Hamlett, FBI, cold case initiative

About the Author
Susan Klopfer, Mount Pleasant, IA, USA
sklopfer@gmail.com