George Love
Age 38
A Black man from a rural county in Mississippi
Ruleville, Mississippi
January 8, 1958
On the cold winter night of January 7, 1958, George Love visited a general store in Ruleville, Mississippi. According to newspaper reports from the time, Love, a 38-year-old Black man, had a criminal record and was suspected of multiple murders, a robbery and two recent arsons in the area. After Love paid with fire-scorched bills, a night marshal named Exie Jennings said he tried to arrest Love to question him about the money. Love reportedly shot Jennings four times and fled. Jennings was hospitalized but survived.
A sheriff’s posse of about 25 men hunted Love throughout the night. The group included local law enforcement officers, as well as teenagers armed with guns, newspapers reported in 1958. In the early morning on January 8, the posse eventually discovered Love hiding on a plantation near Ruleville and, according to news reports, fatally shot Love after he opened fire on the group.
Initial Investigation
Soon after Love died, the NAACP condemned the killing as a “legal lynching” and called for a Department of Justice investigation. The NAACP said there was evidence Love had been fleeing the posse and was shot in the back.
A 2011 DOJ memo about the case says the FBI created a case file in 1958 that included relevant newspaper articles, an NAACP press release, and internal memos that summarized the shooting and the calls to investigate. One of the old memos, from the FBI’s Memphis office, said the division had not received any complaints or allegations of federal violations in the matter. The 2011 DOJ memo does not mention the FBI taking any further investigative steps, nor is there any mention of a local investigation or charges.
Till Act Status
In 2008, the FBI initiated a review of the circumstances surrounding Love’s death. Using old newspaper articles, the FBI tried to find people reportedly involved in the killing — a list that included members of the Sunflower County Sheriff Department.
According to the 2011 DOJ memo, Sunflower County Sheriff James Haywood told the FBI there were no existing sheriff’s office files prior to 1970. Haywood said his predecessor had destroyed a large volume of old files, despite a requirement that files be kept for 75 years. Likewise, there were no case files at the district attorney’s office from before 1980, the memo said. Those files had been destroyed in a warehouse fire in Washington County, Mississippi. The FBI asked for help from multiple other agencies, but none could offer more information about Love’s death.
Some of the people the FBI interviewed during its re-investigation said they were familiar with certain members of the posse, but that those members had died since 1958. The FBI searched the Social Security Administration Death Index and confirmed that at least two of the people named in old newspaper articles were dead, including the night marshal reportedly shot by Love. An attempt to interview elderly residents in the area failed to uncover new leads, as none questioned could remember the shooting.
The Department of Justice closed the case again in 2011, namely because the FBI couldn’t find any living subjects who might be prosecuted. The relevant statute of limitations had long expired, the DOJ said in its 2011 memo, and there wasn’t enough evidence to “refute the version of events reported in the newspapers at the time indicating that the subject or subjects acted in self-defense or that the shooting was otherwise legally justified as a necessary use of force in the apprehension of a felon fleeing arrest.”
Case Status closed
Closed 06/10/2011
Themes
- Closed All Subjects Deceased
- Closed Cases
- Deaths Involving Law Enforcement
- 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)