Jerry Mitchell - Beneath the Sheets: Klansmen I've Covered

 

I'm standing on the front porch facing Byron De La Beckwith, the notorious Klansman who killed Medgar Evers. He wasn't caught doing that, but he was caught trying to plant a ticking time bomb outside a Jewish leader's home in New Orleans. You see, my stories are the ones that got the case reopened against him as well as other Klansmen. But he hadn't figured that out, or at least I thought so. My wife was eight months pregnant at the time. She begged me not to go visit him. "It's a trap." "I have to go." "I don't want to raise the children by myself." "I have to go." "If you go, I'll never forgive you." "Karen, I have to go." 

 

Beckwith made me answer all these questions before he'd ever let me come to his house. "Where'd you grow up? What are your parents' names? Where do they live? Where do you live? Where do you go to church? Are you white?" Fortunately, my conservative Christian Southern upbringing meant I passed with flying colors. So, he welcomed me at his house and walked me into the living room. And for six hours, he spewed one racist remark after another. After the interview ended, he walked me out into the darkness, walked me out to my car, then blocked my way and stood in front of me and said, "If you write positive things about white Caucasian Christians, God will bless you. If you write negative things about white Caucasian Christians, God will punish you. If God does not punish you directly, several individuals will do it for Him." [audience laughter] As soon as he got out of the way, I was in that car and down the hill.

 

My descent into the world of racist killers began when I saw the movie, Mississippi Burning, with a couple of FBI agents who investigated that case, which involved three civil rights workers who were killed in 1964 in Mississippi, two of them from here in New York City. But the thing that's just always stuck in my craw is for someone to get away with a crime, especially murder. And that's what happened in these cases. What made these cases so egregious was the fact not just that these Klansmen got away with murder, but the fact that everybody knew these Klansmen got away with murder. That's what upset me. 

 

I talked to Beckwith not too long after that, and he had figured it out by this point that I had done the stories. So, I talked to him on the telephone, and he said, "I'm going to live to be 120. I don't know how much longer you've got. You're a reckless driver. You may have a wreck or somebody may molest you. Do you know somebody who'd do that?" And I said, "Do you?" It frightened me. I remember checking in my car for a while. The thing I realized was he could kill me. But I also hated bullies, probably because of all those times, I got the crap beaten out of me on the playground. I wasn't going to be intimidated by Byron De La Beckwith. So, I persisted. He was arrested, hauled into the courtroom and then one day in the courtroom, he spotted me, yelled at me, "You see that boy over there? When he dies, he's going to Africa." [audience laughter]

 

I turned to my friend Ed and said, "You know, I've always wanted to go to Africa." [audience laughter] On February 5th, 1994, a jury convicted Byron De La Beckwith of the murder of Medgar Evers. When the word guilty rang out, the sound cascaded down the hall, the cries of joy, until it reached an open foyer of white and Blacks, and just exploded in applause. I just felt chills down my spine, because I realized what had seemed so impossible really was possible. There were dozens more cases that could be prosecuted other than this one. 

 

A couple of days later, the sheriff calls me and tells me that when they took Beckwith off, he kept saying two words. I'm like, "What, two words?" "Like, “Jerry Mitchell?" He would tell me, "Well, you might not want to go home the same way every night." That disturbed me a little bit. But I never told my wife about that, because she was already worried I was going to be killed or her family harmed. She wanted me to write other investigative stories. But one day, the family of Vernon Dahmer asked me to come and meet with them in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. And the widow of Vernon Dahmer, with tears in her eyes, asked me to help her find justice in her husband's case. So, here I weighed my own family's interest and heard her story. I couldn't say no. You may have never heard of Vernon Dahmer, but you should have.

 

He was an African-American farmer who spent his whole life fighting for the rights of all to be able to vote. The Klan didn't like that. They attacked him and his family. One frigid night, January 10th, 1966, they threw firebombs into the house, began firing their guns into the house. He woke up, grabbed his shotgun, ran to the front of the house to defend his family, so his family could escape safely out a back window. Unfortunately, the flames of the fire seared his lungs and he died later that day. A few weeks later in the mail came his voter registration card. He had fought his whole life for the right of all Americans to vote, but had never been able to cast a ballot himself.

 

The man who ordered that killing was a man by the name of Sam Bowers, the head of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, the most violent Klan organization in America. If you saw Bowers, he looked like a kind grandfather in a seersucker suit. I had people tell me this too. They're like, “Jerry, why do you bother these old guys?” And I say, “Look, the thing you're forgetting is these are young killers who just happen to get old.” You see, the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were responsible for at least 10 killings in Mississippi, and Bowers ordered every single one of them. 

 

While I was investigating this case, I got a phone call from a Klansman. He said, "Did you think we were going to let you go unscathed? We know where you live. We've got pictures of you and your family." Well, I've gotten a lot of death threats in doing what I do, but this one really frightened me, because he's threatening my family. My wife became extremely upset about it. I tried my best to tell her, "Look, all right, I promise this is going to be it. I'm not doing any more after this. This is it." 

 

The guy who was the main witness against Bowers back in the 1960s was a guy named Billy Roy Pitts. Billy Roy Pitts was involved in the killing, had dropped his gun, got caught, pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life in prison. I'd been told the reason there wasn't a record of that was because he went into the Federal Witness Protection Program. But in my research, I found out the Federal Witness Protection Program didn't even exist at the time. So, guess what? He had never served a day of his life sentence. So, I wanted to talk to him, but no one seemed to know where he was. 

 

And this will sound like an advertisement from an internet site, but I got on switchboard.com, and typed his name and up it popped, Billy Roy Pitts. His address in Denham Springs, Louisiana, and his telephone number. So, I called him. First 20 minutes of the conversation went like this. "How'd you find me? How'd you find me? How'd you find me?" "It's on the internet." [audience laughter] "The internet? I got an unlisted telephone number." "Well, you have to take it up with them." 

 

So, as a result of my story, Mississippi authorities issued a warrant for his arrest. He didn't like that. In fact, he ran. While he was on the run, he sent me an audio cassette tape in the mail. I got it and I put it and played it, and this is how it began. "Jerry, I just thought I'd let you know you've ruined my life. But I promise, if I talk to anybody, I'd talk to you." So, here's this tape. Proceeds to tell me all about his involvement killing Vernon Dahmer and his involvement in all this other Klan violence. Shortly after that, he turned himself in and this led to the arrest of Sam Bowers and his trial in August of 1998. One Klansman actually got up and said that the Klan was a benevolent organization passing out fruit baskets to the needy at Christmas.

 

Under cross-examination, he admitted that he had never actually passed out any fruit baskets himself. [audience chuckle] Bowers was represented by a lawyer for the Klan back in the 1960s who represented all these guys. And one of the perks of being a lawyer for the Klan back in those days was, well, free membership. So, he's cross-examining Billy Roy Pitts about this planning meeting that took place prior to the actual raid and he's like, "Mr. Pitts, who all was at that planning meeting?" And Pitts is like, "Ah, let's see. I was there. Sam Bowers was there. Well, you were there." [audience laughter] And Bowers' lawyer's like, "Objection, Your Honor." 

 

I've covered a lot of trials in my life, but that's the only trial I ever covered where a witness implicated the defense lawyer [audience laughter] in the case. On August 21st, 1998, Sam Bowers was convicted and sent to prison, just one cell down from Byron De La Beckwith. Back home, I promised my wife I would stop, but I couldn't stop. My heart wouldn't let me. I couldn't let these Klansmen get away with murder. So, I started secretly working on these cases, continuing to work on these cases. And sure enough, she caught me. I was worried she'd just be furious with me. She told me she was always going to worry about me. She would never stop worrying about me. But that she understood these cases were more important than her fears. She gave me her blessing. I felt so, so relieved, this, like a burden had been lifted from my soul. 

 

21 more men followed Sam Bowers to prison after this. A miracle if ever there was one. And the FBI today is investigating dozens more killings that were unpunished in the civil rights era. Not long after Sam Bowers was convicted, Billy Roy Pitts testified in this hearing. When he got done testifying, he walked to the back of the courtroom and ran into the Dahmer family. There was a widow, Mrs. Dahmer, several of the Dahmer children. And Billy Roy Pitts apologized to Mrs. Dahmer for what he had done and asked for her forgiveness. She forgave him, and she began to cry and the Dahmer children who were there began to cry, he began to cry, I began to cry. And isn't that what redemption's all about? Trying to make things right even when they've gone so terribly wrong in the past? May God bless you on your own journey of redemption. Thanks, guys.