“The families of the victims are still living with the horrors of the murders,” says Ben Greenberg, an investigative reporter with the Cold Case Project, an organization of writers and filmmakers dedicated to bringing these cases to justice. “They need closure.”

August 24, 2010, WNYC Radio, The Takeaway with John Hockenberry, “Federal Initiative Fails to Warm Cold Cases”

We speak with Shaila Dewan, national correspondent for The New York Times, and Benjamin Greenberg, an investigative reporter for the Civil Rights Cold Case Project. We talk about the initiative and consider why so few of the cases are being pursued.

August 8, 2010, Washington Post, “The glacial pace of justice,” by Hank Klibanoff

Too many families whose relatives were killed by the Klan have waited too long. Perpetrators, witnesses and powerful narratives of history are dying every day. “I’ve waited 44 years for this phone call,” the daughter of Clifton Walker, gunned down in Woodville, Miss., in early 1964, blurted out when someone called in March 2008 for information about her dad’s murder.

The caller was Civil Rights Cold Case reporter Ben Greenberg. Two years later, the Walker family still hopes to hear from the FBI.

February 1, 2010, Boston.com, “Somerville writer looks for answers in abandoned civil rights cases,” by Alix Roy

Since he began investigating abandoned civil rights cases in 2004, Ben Greenberg of Somerville has assumed the role of detective, journalist, photographer, and technologist in an effort to expose perpetrators of southern racial violence in cases long dismissed by law enforcement.

For the past two years, he has collaborated with a team of reporters on the Civil Rights Cold Case Project, traveling south to interview surviving witnesses and searching for evidence from before he was born.

Greenberg tells the Globe how his fascination with civil rights cold cases began, and how modern technology could help him solve them.

January 15, 2010, USA Today, “King’s FBI files may be opened to public view,” by Jerry Mitchell

Ben Greenberg of Boston, whose father served as a special assistant to King in 1962 and 1963, praised Kerry’s legislation. “The murder of Martin Luther King Jr. was a trauma that our country will not recover from unless we can clear the air about what really happened,” he said.

Greenberg, who has spent recent years investigating a number of unsolved killings from the era, including the 1964 killing of Clifton Walker near Woodville, said documents on many other racial slayings from the 1950s and 1960s should be made public, too.

In the 1940s, 50s and 60s, he was directly involved in many of the political struggles that shaped the American left—labor, disarmament, civil rights. During this period, he also had had close, formative relationships with some of the finest jazz musicians of the swing era—Pee Wee Russell, Max Kaminsky, Rex Stewart and, especially, Frankie Newton.

Delving into these histories changed me and quickly broadened the scope of Hungry Blues. Hungry Blues has led me to friendships and collaborations with civil rights movement veterans. It has taken me to Mississippi and Alabama. Hungry Blues has led to my current work as a journalist and in online communications for a human rights organization.

Visit my blog

• hungryblues.net

Summary

The Civil Rights Cold Case Project is an unprecedented collaboration bringing together the power of investigative reporting, narrative writing, documentary filmmaking and interactive multimedia production to reveal the long-neglected truth behind unsolved civil rights murders, and to facilitate reconciliation and healing.

Today in the American South, scores of civil rights murders remain unsolved, uninvestigated, unprosecuted and untold. Those two legacies of violence and silence still haunt the region and continue to damage race relations in the United States.

Many histories have been written about the struggle for civil rights; many documentaries have been made about the movement and the resistance that rose up against it. But the history of the South and of the United States still has huge, important, undocumented holes where myths and mysteries reside, threatening to undermine the nation’s goal of putting racial conflict behind.

In association with the Civil Rights Cold Case Project, I am investigating the murder of Clifton Walker, an African American man who was killed outside of Woodville, MS on February 28, 1964; other murders; and substantial evidence that community outcry and political pressure from government officials—including a state senator, a state representative and members of the Adams County Grand Jury—impeded and possibly stopped Mississippi Highway and Safety Patrol investigations of racial violence in Southwest Mississippi.

Learn more

Website

• coldcases.org

Blog posts

• The FBI’s Slow Race against Time
• A Little More Justice in Mississippi
• What the FBI Showed Him
• Picking up the trail from a 25-year-old tip

Case overview

• Clifton Walker Case

I directed online advocacy and fundraising campaigns. I provided editorial and creative direction for web and email content, and I oversaw internet technology projects. I worked closely with all of PHR’s campaigns and programs.

With the communications team, I increased online giving to PHR by 50%, doubled PHR’s website traffic and tripled mentions of PHR in traditional media sources.

PHR on the Web

Main sites

• Homepage – physiciansforhumanrights.org
• Blog – phrblog.org
• Student blog – phrstudents.org

Microsites

• The Torture Papers
• IranFreeTheDocs.org
• DarfuriWomen.org
• BrokenLives.info
• AfghanMassGrave.org

Social media and networks

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Flickr
• YouTube
• Change.org

This follow-up op-ed in an Alabama newspaper elaborated on the March 16 Colorlines article with new developments in the Recy Taylor story and explored further the possible role of federal law enforcement in pursuing unpunished, racially motivated rape cases from the the 40s, 50s and 60s.

Benjamin Greenberg, “Recy Taylor May Finally See Alabama Acknowledge Her 1944 Rape,” Colorlines, March 16, 2011

This story broke the news that Alabama State Representative Dexter Grimsley was planning to introduce a resolution for a state apology to Recy Taylor, 91, who was raped by 7 white men at gunpoint in 1944 in Abbeville, Alabama. In the 12 days before my story was published, Change.org had gathered 2100 signatures on a petition calling on Alabama officials to issue the apologies. After the story story, signatures skyrocketed on the petition, more than doubling in the first 24 hours and passing 15000 within in a few more days. After 5 days, Grimsley, Abbeville Mayor Ryan Blalock and other local officials held a press conference, where they made personal apologies to Taylor and declared that formal apologies were on the way. The strongly worded resolution passed the state House unanimously on March 29 and the state Senate unanimously on April 21. Alabama Governor Robert Bentley signed the resolution into law on April 28, and state officials presented the state apology to Taylor in Abbeville on May 1, Mother’s Day.

Benjamin Greenberg, “Investigations Force Feds to Revisit Murders of Civil Rights Era,” Colorlines, January 12, 2011

“Investigators Force Feds to Revisit Murders” is my coverage of revelations by Civil Rights Cold Case Project colleague Stanley Nelson, implicating a Richland Parish, La. man in the 1964 murder of Frank Morris. Frank Morris, like Clifton Walker, whose 1964 murder I am investigating, was targeted not for civil rights activism but for reasons “less overtly political, and perhaps even more insidious. These are stories in which there seem to be an accumulation of hostilities towards a black male that reach an unpredictable breaking point. Three main things animate the hostilities towards this different class of victim, often occurring in combination: their financial success, their willingness to stand up to whites and allegations of their having liaisons, real or perceived, with white women.”

Jerry Mitchell and I obtained a letter from convicted Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen claiming that there was insufficient evidence to imprison him for the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers and that God is going to get whoever helped put him away. We broke the story on page 1 of the Clarion-Ledger, the widest circulating newspaper in Mississippi.

“Legacy of a Murder” is the first major publication on the 1959 murder of Samuel O’Quinn. The article explores the story through interviews with four of O’Quinn’s living children and through additional investigative reporting.  At the time of publication, the US House of Representatives had recently passed federal legislation allocating $13.5 million annually for a special FBI office and Civil Rights Division unit to investigate civil rights-era crimes in coordination with local and state authorities. “Legacy of a Murder” also examines the challenges and possibilities for families seeking justice for loved ones who were victims of civil rights era racial murders.

“Belated Justice” covers the growing movement seeking widespread remediation for crimes against blacks and their allies during the civil rights era. The article raises questions about possible government accountability for race violence in the 1950s and 60s.

“Voter Disenfranchisement by Attrition” is the first article published in any media outlet to identify, investigate and analyze the the voting rights crisis facing Hurricane Katrina survivors from New Orleans.

I’ve been a member of the Dollars & Sense Editorial Collective since July 2005. The collective meets weekly to read submissions and edit forthcoming articles.

Sample article and interviews