PrayersForMaura
Help Find Maura Murray
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Freddie Lee Thomas broken body was found on a highway near Sidon in the middle of the night in August 1965.
A 16-year-old African-American who went by the nickname Sleepy, Thomas was given a quick autopsy and quicker burial. His death was written off by the county coroner and pathologist as a hit-and-run accident. Leflore County Sheriff George Smith issued a statement saying he hoped to find the vehicle that was responsible. The incident was supposed to vanish, along with Thomas body, into an unmarked grave in Greenwoods Magnolia Cemetery. But at the urging of Liz Fusco, a Cincinnati-born white woman volunteering with the Freedom Schools in Leflore County that summer, 100 Sidon residents wrote letters to President Lyndon Johnson requesting a government investigation. In response, the FBI sent agents to Sidon at the time a known haven of Ku Klux Klan activity.
The investigation, which took place over the course of a few days during the late summer of 1965, painted a possibly different picture, one that pointed toward a brutal murder.
But like many civil rights slayings, the case went cold. No charges were filed; no arrests were made. Today, at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., Thomas name is listed as one of the 74 forgotten victims of the civil rights era.
http://www.gwcommonwealth.com/articles/2008/06/08/news/top_stories/news1.txt
A 16-year-old African-American who went by the nickname Sleepy, Thomas was given a quick autopsy and quicker burial. His death was written off by the county coroner and pathologist as a hit-and-run accident. Leflore County Sheriff George Smith issued a statement saying he hoped to find the vehicle that was responsible. The incident was supposed to vanish, along with Thomas body, into an unmarked grave in Greenwoods Magnolia Cemetery. But at the urging of Liz Fusco, a Cincinnati-born white woman volunteering with the Freedom Schools in Leflore County that summer, 100 Sidon residents wrote letters to President Lyndon Johnson requesting a government investigation. In response, the FBI sent agents to Sidon at the time a known haven of Ku Klux Klan activity.
The investigation, which took place over the course of a few days during the late summer of 1965, painted a possibly different picture, one that pointed toward a brutal murder.
But like many civil rights slayings, the case went cold. No charges were filed; no arrests were made. Today, at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., Thomas name is listed as one of the 74 forgotten victims of the civil rights era.
http://www.gwcommonwealth.com/articles/2008/06/08/news/top_stories/news1.txt
