Clinton Melton
Age 33
A Black husband and father of four
Glendora, Mississippi
December 3, 1955
Clinton Melton was a young father from Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, where he lived with his wife, Beulah, and their four children. He worked at a gas station in the village of Glendora, just north of the town where Emmett Till was murdered in August 1955. Later the same year, on December 3, Melton, who was Black, argued with a white customer, Elmer Otis Kimbell, accusing Kimbell of having pumped more gas than he had paid for.
According to a Department of Justice memo, a witness reported that Kimbell said he was going home to retrieve a shotgun and that he planned to return and kill Melton. Kimbell left the station but soon returned with a gun and fatally shot Melton, who by that time was in his car, as he had been advised by the station owner to leave before Kimbell returned. Melton was unarmed when he was killed.
Initial Investigation
Kimbell was indicted for the killing. He pleaded innocent, claiming Melton had shot him first, one newswire said in 1956. Another reported that Mississippi might seek the death penalty.
Melton’s widow, 29-year-old Beulah, died shortly before the trial. She crashed her car into the Black Bayou and drowned, apparently after being run off the road, according to newspaper accounts and a historical marker.
The trial took place soon after, in the same courthouse where two white men had been acquitted of Emmett Till’s murder. Incidentally, Kimbell was friends with one of those men and was using his car the day he shot Melton, according to a Department of Justice memo about the case. The memo says that, after the shooting, Kimbell went to the friend’s house — bypassing a physician’s office along the way — and the two men then drove 25 miles to a hospital in Charleston. A Charleston doctor testified he had examined a bullet wound in Kimbell’s shoulder that night.
Three witnesses at the trial, including the white gas station owner, contradicted the claim that Melton shot Kimbell. They said Melton was unarmed. Moreover, no weapon was found in Melton’s car or with his body. The DOJ memo does not specify when or how Kimbell was shot, only that the doctor who examined his wound said it was not caused by close-range fire.
After deliberating for several hours, an all-white, all-male jury acquitted Kimbell.
Till Act Status
The FBI opened a review of Melton’s case in 2008, during which it found contact information for Melton’s relatives and interviewed two people from Sumner, Mississippi, who were alive at the time of the shooting. The bureau also contacted various law enforcement and government officials in Mississippi, as well as the NAACP and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The Tallahatchie County Deputy Circuit Court Clerk provided Kimbell’s trial file, which contained information on his indictment and the later verdict, as well as subpoenas for witnesses in the trial. A death certificate obtained by the FBI showed he had died on February 25, 1985.
The Department of Justice ultimately determined Melton’s killing was not a prosecutable violation of federal criminal rights statutes. Kimbell was dead, and the relevant statute of limitations had run out. The department closed the case in 2010.
Case Status closed
Closed 04/12/2010
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)