The Murder of Herbert Lee and Louis Allen
(1961-1964) August 15, 1961: Bob Moses (a SNCC worker) accompanied farmer Ernest Isaac, Bertha Lee Hughes, and Matilda Schoby to register at the Liberty courthouse. All three filled out a form but were refused the test. Upon leaving Liberty, their car was pulled over by Marshall Carwyle Bates of Liberty, who arrested Moses. August 28, […]
Herbert Lee, a farmer and the father of nine children, was a charter member of Amite County’s NAACP branch and remained openly active even after Sheriff Caston’s 1954 raid.After Moses’s arrival in Amite, Lee volunteered to drive him around the area to contact potential voters.Lee also provided transportation to students in the nearby McComb Movement.According […]
E.W. Steptoe, Amite County native and owner of a dairy and cotton farm, founded Amite County’s NAACP chapter in 1953 and recruited nearly 200 members in less than a year. Because of Steptoe and others who assisted him, the chapter was quite active until one night in 1954, after the Brown decision, when Sheriff E. […]
Louis Allen, an independent logger and father of four children, witnessed Lee’s murder and contacted the Justice Department. Several months after Hurst’s trial, the deputy sheriff informed Allen he knew about his contact with the Justice Department and broke his jaw. Allen was also economically harassed and jailed twice on false charges. After his second […]
McDew, Charles “Chuck”: Oral History
Charles “Chuck” McDew participated in the civil rights movement in many parts of the American South, including Mississippi.