MISSISSIPPI: Case Closed

For four weeks a 60-man FBI task force roamed Mississippi’s Pearl River County (pop. 22,000). Agents questioned both whites and Negroes, prowled through farmyard and country thicket, homed in on the mob that had dragged Mack Charles Parker, Negro rape suspect, heel-first from the county jail at Poplarville and shot him to death (TIME, May 4). Last week the agents abruptly closed their books on the case, locked up their temporary Poplarville field office. On their way out of Mississippi they called on Governor James Plemon Coleman at Jackson, left behind a dossier identifying the men who lynched Parker and dumped his corpse into Pearl River.

Why was the FBI withdrawing? In Washington, Attorney General William P. Rogers explained that there was no federal jurisdiction, i.e., the lynchers had not crossed a state line. Parker had been abducted and killed in Mississippi—and prosecution belonged to the state. To help the state make its case, the FBI laid out the shocking story of what had happened. About 35 men had met at a farm outside Poplarville, but lynch justice was not their immediate aim. Rather, they were looking for ways to prevent a crowning indignity: the courtroom questioning by Parker’s Negro attorney on the sexual attack of the 24-year-old white rape victim. Fired by beer, whisky and hot speeches during a two-hour meeting, the plotters eventually hit upon a scheme. By paper ballot, at least ten men were chosen to lynch Parker. They did.

In Jackson, Governor Coleman acknowledged that he had received an FBI report, refused to reveal its contents. There would, he said, be no prosecution for at least six months. That was because Mississippi courts have already ruled that it is reversible error to call a special grand jury to consider only one case. The ruling was convenient for Coleman. Since he is himself running forthe state legislature and backing a hand-picked candidate to succeed him as Governor, it could be mighty embarrassing to have the Parker case come up before the August primary.