over at this website Dying to Vote in Mississippi, Part Iii
"Birdia was brave, but she also lived in fear of the sheriff and others after she won her voter registration rights in 1961. That made the sheriff and the others really angry with her - more than ever." Rev. Willie Blue
Dying to Vote in Mississippi, Part Iii
Charles Sudduth, a native Mississippian who has studied and written about Klan murders, confirmed that decapitation and "cleanly severed arms" indicate strong evidence of the Klan's involvement in the deaths of Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett.
"Klansmen were separate in their murders than others. They weren't afraid of the law, since many lawmen were Klansmen. They didn't run away from the crime scene but felt comfortable in staying colse to for a while. They also were known for torture and for mutilating the body."
Rev. Willie Blue, a Sncc member who worked in the Greenwood Sncc office and knew Keglar well, said that he never believed her death was an accident, but that Keglar "had to have been murdered."
"Birdia was brave, but she also lived in fear of the sheriff and others after she won her voter registration rights in 1961. That made the sheriff and the others really angry with her - more than ever."
The Charleston priest tells how he once scared Keglar when she was at work.
"I was driving to Charleston and exterior of town a car with Klansmen started following me. I was scared but I drove on into Charleston and to Birdia's office at the funeral home.
"When I walked in and told her what happened, she was terrified and asked me why I had come there. She was afraid I had led a trail to her."
Blue also confirmed that Keglar was found decapitated.
"We all knew this was no accident. She was in the front seat with Grafton driving, and he was injured but not killed. Everybody colse to here knew that Birdia was murdered but they would not talk about it.
"They were all fearful of what could happen to them and their families. There were no police or deputies who would have taken this seriously, anyway - that she was murdered by the Klan."
Klan shootings and murders were not unusual in Tallahatchie and Leflore counties, said Blue, "in fact they had picked up in the last two years, from 1964 to 1966."
He recalled an earlier shooting that took place in Greenwood "right in front of me" when three Klansmen drove up where he and Silas McGhee, also a Snc volunteer, were working exterior of the Greenwood Sncc office.
"It was raining and we were waiting for it to stop. A car came up with three men, one of them was Byron de la Beckwith [the convicted murderer of Medgar Evers] - he was still running loose. They shot McGhee, right out in the open.
"But no one was going to listen to us, especially the sheriff." McGee was injured but not killed in the accident. Robert Keglar was kept away from the urgency scene but slipped away to the small town later that night to try to learn what happened to his mother.
"All I saw were some population there [in Sidon] talking about the wreck. It was near a bridge and they were saying that something didn't look right."
Don Whitten, Tallahatchie County Prosecutor, visited Birdia's son at home that night. "He asked me permission for something, I just don't remember what. But he asked me to sign a paper and I did."
Keglar says that he never collected the life insurance his mum carried. "The enterprise would not pay me, and they would never say why."
The Charleston man has continued seeking data about his mother's death. In 2004, he helped deliver Foias to sheriffs in Tallahatchie and Leflore counties and later wondered if that was a good idea.
"I was visiting friends a few months later. When I came home, a friend who was house-sitting asked if I knew a short man and a tall man who drove a pickup truck.
"They came to the door while I was gone and asked to see me. They wouldn't leave their names or a card. I don't think it was the Fbi."
Several Incidents surrounding these deaths contribute context in searching for what happened (and why) to Keglar and Hamlet.
oIn the same week that Vernon Dahmer, Birdia Keglar and Adeline settlement were killed, the Ku Klux Klan was under laberious investigation by the House Committee on Un-American activities or Huac. The hearings opened at the end of 1965 and continued into the first months of 1966. As Klan representatives from colse to the country testified, there were planned cross burnings, lynching, bombings and other activities taking place in each of their regions at the same time their members appeared before Huac.
oThe Mississippi Klan group was scheduled to appear before Huac on January 13, 1966, the day after Dahmer's death and the Sidon incident. The United Klans of America dramatized its proximity in Mississippi by burning over a hundred crosses throughout the state "less than two weeks after Christmas" in protest against Huac's recovery of hearings on the Klan.
oThe Ku Klux Klan had increased activities in the Delta from 1964 to 1966, together with the Hills region colse to Charleston and Greenwood, state several observers of the region. Klansman and longtime Citizen's Council member, Byron de la Beckwith of Greenwood, who earlier murdered Medgar Evers, became a White Knight Kleagle or recruiter in August of 1965, and later joined the United Klans of America.
Beckwith appeared before Huac in January of 1966, as did Gordon Lackey of Greenwood, who earlier helped write the 40-page constitution of the White Knights, the state's most incommunicable Klan organization. John Winstead and Wesley Kersey, also of Greenwood, were active Klan members according to Huac reports.
Several residents of colse to Winona, Greenville, and Yazoo City were also listed as members of their respective Klaverns, according to an connected Press reporter exterior the hearings; hence, Klan action in Mississippi was not microscopic to the Southern counties as it was (and is) so often reported.
oA story filed by the connected Press appearing in the Memphis industrial petition on October 31, 1965, about ten weeks before the Sidon car wreck, stated that Fbi and Mississippi officers obtained in advance of the Huac hearings, a "top-secret document" of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, "including a virtual guerrilla warfare order."
The document, a three-page report, was really an menagerial order of the secretive White Knights and gave details about harassment of enemies, deception of the public, and instructions for burying firearms and ammunition in case of a "crack-down." The narrative named Klan members in both Tallahatchie and Leflore counties, together with colse to Greenwood and Charleston. Klan members were also reported residing in Yazoo City, Shaw, and Greenville.
oTwo months before the Sidon car wreck, a Klan leaflet was distributed throughout the small cotton town "around November 18 [1965]," telling white population to get registered in order to "combat communists and liberals." The pamphlet, described in Sovereignty Commission files, also stated that Gov. Johnson and Senator Eastland were "too liberal" and should be voted out of office. The leaflet named 15 "liberals" and civil rights leaders together with a local white man who served as a federal registrar.
Also named were Mrs. Laura McGhee and sons Jake and Silas, Mr. Dewey Green, and known activist and union organizer Liz Fusco. Sidon had already been targeted that fall by the Klan as one of several small havens for Klansmen to determine into, according to connected Sovereignty Commission reports.
oFinally, on the same day that Dahmer, Birdia Keglar and Adeline settlement were killed, J. Edgar Hoover for the first time ever visited the Fbi's new Mississippi headquarters in Jackson for the grand opening. He was in Mississippi the day before the state's Klansmen were to testify in Washington, D. C.
Margaret Block, Sncc volunteer and friend of Birdia Keglar, learned of Keglar's death several months after interesting to California.
"I remember mental right then she was probably murdered. She was a smart woman, a good strategist who commonly knew if there was impending danger," Block said.
Block had moved to the west coast, fearing her own life was in danger, and went on to graduate from San Francisco State University and the Pacific Union College in instruction to come to be a master instructor in San Francisco.
She returned to the Delta after 22 years where she often teaches black history to children and adults, drawing upon her own experiences, together with her time spent in Tallahatchie County.
"You know, I probably would have been in that car with Birdia and Adlena that day if I had not been in California," Block said.
("Dying to Vote in Mississippi, Parts I, Ii and Iii Copyright 2005 are excerpted from "Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil rights Revisited," by Susan Klopfer. See http://themiddleoftheinternet.com)
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