Clifton Walker
Age 37
A Black father of five on his way home from work
Woodville, Mississippi
February 29, 1964
Clifton Walker was a 37-year-old Black man and father of five from the small Southwest Mississippi town of Woodville. He had a job about 40 miles north at the International Paper Company in Natchez, where he took a late shift on Feb. 28, 1964, according to the 1964 FBI file on the murder. Walker finished work around 11 p.m., and carpooled with several friends to the spot several miles north of Woodville where they had left their respective cars, before continuing on his own down an unlit country road near his home close to midnight.
He was found dead the following afternoon on the same road, his feet on the floorboard under the wheel and his upper body flung across the passenger seat. The car was still in high gear with Walker’s keys dangling from the glove box door, which hung open, revealing a chrome plated Smith & Wesson .38. He had been killed by multiple close-range shotgun blasts to the head. The car windows had been shot out and Walker’s vehicle was heavily damaged by shotgun blasts, according to reports from Mississippi Highway Patrol (MHP) investigators in 1964 that are referenced in a DOJ memo on the case. The time of the attack has been estimated by law enforcement and investigative journalists as being close to midnight on February 28 or early February 29.
Initial Investigation
A local white man, Prentiss Mathis, reported Walker’s body to law enforcement. Mathis would become one of several suspects in 1964. While a 2013 DOJ memo on the case notes that the only evidence linking Mathis to the killing was that he was belligerent during a police interview, and that he was a known racist, the original MHP report noted that they found Mathis suspicious for another reason. Mathis had driven by Walker’s shot up car many hours before he reported it, and said that he hadn’t noticed the damage. In the MHP’s report, they say, “We are of the opinion that it is impossible for this man, or anyone else, to drive by a vehicle in this condition, with all the windows shot out and a large hole in the side of the door, without stopping to see what was the matter.”
The Wilkinson County sheriff processed the crime scene with Mississippi Highway Patrolmen who had come onto the scene. The sheriff then made a formal request for help from the Mississippi Highway Patrol, which then officially joined the investigation.
Initially, the MHP considered as suspects the brothers and brothers-in-law of a white woman who alleged that Walker told her at a truck stop, where she was working as a waitress, that he was attracted to her. One of the men was a founding organizer of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
A month into the investigation, the MHP saw Mathis, who had reported the car, and two other men, as their main suspects. The two men reportedly had been seen together the night Walker was killed, one of them within a mile of the murder scene around 10:30 p.m.
In November 1964, MHP investigators recommended two other men for arrest to the local District Attorney, according to the FBI file from that time. One of the men was a well-known Klansman who had been connected to numerous acts of racist violence, and the other was a county constable, who was allegedly the exalted cyclops of the Wilkinson County Unit of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Despite the recommendation for arrest, the district attorney, who had a history of interfering with MHP investigations of Klan violence and was alleged to have attended Klan meetings himself, contended that he had “insufficient evidence” to charge the suspects.
By December, the MHP reported that their investigation was “at a standstill,” and an FBI investigation that had also been opened early that year was closed. No one was ever arrested for Walker’s murder.
Till Act Status
The FBI opened a review of Walker’s case in 2009, during which it retrieved its original case file and reportedly researched whether anyone identified by the MHP or by “other relevant individuals” was still alive. The bureau found that all subjects alleged in 1964 “to have had any motive to harm Walker” were dead, according to the 2013 Justice Department memo. Notably, three people of interest had died during or after the year in which the FBI initiated its review. “It became apparent that continued investigation would not lead to a viable prosecution of a living suspect,” the memo said.
Around the same time as the FBI’s review, journalist Ben Greenberg investigated the cold case and published a series of stories in which he explored a number of leads, possible living witnesses, and people of interest not accounted for in the Justice Department’s memo closing the case. The DOJ’s memo closing the case did not address whether the FBI looked into the possibility that KKK members had killed Walker, though the FBI’s own 1964 files on the case are heavily focused on the Klan. Rather, a single footnote in the memo mentions that the Mississippi Highway Patrol was investigating local policemen at the time of Walker’s death — including the Mississippi Highway Patrolman who first responded to the murder scene — for possible involvement with the Klan.
Saying it was without witnesses or known living suspects, the Department of Justice closed the case again in 2013.
Case Status closed
Closed 10/01/2013
Themes
- Closed All Subjects Deceased
- Closed Cases
- Men
About the Project
This multiplatform investigation draws upon more than two years of reporting, thousands of documents and dozens of first-hand interviews. FRONTLINE spoke to family and friends of the victims, and witnesses, some of whom had never been interviewed; current and former Justice Department officials and FBI agents, state and local law enforcement; lawmakers, civil-rights leaders and investigative journalists, to explore the Department of Justice’s reopening of civil rights-era cold cases under the 2008 Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.
In addition to an examination of the federal effort, the project features the first comprehensive, interactive list of all those whose cases were reopened by the Department of Justice. Today, the list stands at 151 names. Among the victims: voting rights advocates, veterans, Louisville’s first female prosecutor, business owners, mothers, fathers, and children.
The project consists of a web-based interactive experience, serialized podcast, a touring augmented-reality exhibit, documentary and companion education curriculum for high schools and universities.
A project like Un(re)solved would not be possible without the historic and contemporary contributions of universities, civil rights groups, and the press, particularly the Black press, who have ensured the ongoing public record of racist violence in the United States. To pay homage to these groups, the web interactive begins with a quote from journalist, activist and researcher Ida B. Wells, one of the first to document with precision the horrors of racial terror in America. “The way to right wrongs,” she wrote, “is to turn the light of truth upon them.”
At the outset of the project, FRONTLINE forged a relationship with Northeastern University’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ), bringing them on as an academic partner. Launched in 2007 by Distinguished Law Professor Margaret Burnham, CRRJ is a mission-driven program of interdisciplinary teaching, research and policy analysis on race, history, and criminal justice. Their work has expanded beyond the names on the Justice Department’s list, archiving documents in over 1,000 cases of racially motivated homicides.
With support from the CRRJ, FRONTLINE reporters gathered what could be known about the individuals on the list, conducting interviews with family, friends and witnesses, delving into newspaper archives and gathering documentation including headstone applications, draft cards and archival photographs.
At the heart of the project has been a drive to center the voices of the families of those on the list. FRONTLINE partnered with StoryCorps to record nearly two dozen oral histories with victims’ next of kin, which are featured both in the web-based interactive and traveling AR exhibit. These oral histories will also be archived in the National Library of Congress.
To lead the creative vision for the web experience and installation, FRONTLINE partnered with Ado Ato Pictures, a premier mixed reality studio founded by artist, filmmaker, and technologist Tamara Shogaolu.
Shogaolu rooted the visuals in the powerful symbolism of trees. In the United States, trees evoke the ideal of liberty, but also speak to an oppressive history of racially motivated violence. In Persian myth, trees are humanity’s ancestors, while in Toraja, Indonesia, they serve as sacred burial sites.
“I was really inspired by looking at the role of the tree as a symbol in American history” Shogaolu said. “It’s been looked at as a symbol of freedom, we look at it as a connector between generations, and also there’s the association of trees with racial terror.” When designing the creative vision for Un(re)solved Shogaolu wondered whether she might be able to reclaim the symbol of the tree. “As a person of color, we’re often terrified of being in isolated places in the woods. And I thought it was kind of crazy that there are natural environments that instinctually give great fear because of this connection with racial terror and I wanted to reclaim that — to turn these into beautiful spaces.”
Un(re)solved weaves imagery of trees, which also recall family ties, into patterns and textures from the American tradition of quilting. Among enslaved African Americans forbidden to read or write, quilts provided an important space to document family stories. Today, quilting remains a creative outlet rich with story and tradition for many American communities.
We invite you to enter this forest of quilted memories — a testimony to the lives of these individuals, and the multi-generational impact of their untimely, unjust loss.
(Credits to come)