When historians (mostly white) write about the victims of lynching, they concentrate on the crime, its aftermath, and the perpetrators, too often letting the victim languish in that dark purgatory where all such victims lie. Ben Chester White worked most of his adult life for the local county Supervisor, Jimmy Carter. The Carters had been supervisors for generations, and as such, were the most powerful figures in that part of Adams County. White's mother, Clarsie Green, lived near him (she was known as "Aunt Tab" to local white people). Green's parents had been slaves on the nearby Chinkypin Grove Plantation. She (she died in 1981 at 113 years) had an incredible memory of her life, of the hardships of the Depression there, and of her community. I know all this because my grandparents' farm was down the road in that little community of about 100 people, consisting of descendants of former slaves, local white farmers, and a few other residents. I knew, insofar as a child can know an adult, Ben Chester White. He was a lanky, quiet man who would sometimes work for my uncle, supervisor of the neighboring beat at Kingston. He had also lived for a time next door to them. He had several family members living in the area-- his sister, called Sister, another called Baby Doll, and a brother, Ike Chapman. I interviewed most area residents in the 1970s, including Ms. Green. As most African Americans are, she was careful what she said to a white man, but the presence of my grandmother reassured her my purpose was not a threat. She talked about how, during the Depression, hunger lowered the racial boundaries, and black and white children sometimes ate together what little local farmers shared from what they grew. She also sang a song about how black men did the work that white men were paid for. That small community, sometimes called Bude Camp or Sandy Creek Camp (it was on Sandy Creek), was unusual, for although the requisite rules of racial division were dominant, folks there were cordial within those limits. This is why, when Ben Chester White was murdered in the Homochitto National Forest only a few miles away, white people there were shocked. They began to turn against the Klan, for it had committed this terrible act of murder on someone they knew and respected. Like the hardships of the Depression, this murder softened the walls between the races. At the trial of Ernest Avants-- with Klan members on the jury and in the courtroom-- the storekeeper at the Liberty Road corner store testified about the murderers' "brand new" 1966 Chevy Belair being there, and that it had gone down the deadend road that led to White's house. Later, several attempts were made to set the store on fire, and guns were fired at night into the store, where the storekeeper and family lived in the back. Clearly, the Klan comrades of the murderers-- Avants, Claude Fuller, and James Lloyd Jones-- wanted to discourage anyone from testifying against a fellow Klansman. They were all members of a Klan chapter, the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, that the FBI called "the most dangerous terrorist organization in the United States." As a result, the storekeeper and family left the area, the store was closed down, and soon afterward was demolished. The church where White was deacon survives, empty and abandoned, obscured by the vegetation that surrounds it. Dmmsj00 (talk) 04:41, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- As a retired college professor and serious scholar, I should have included with the above narrative information about who might be called on to support some of what I've written. Here's a list: Harry Phillips, producer, ABC News 20/20 newsmagazine; Connie Chung, on-air correspondent, ABC News 20/20; (I worked as a consultant for ABC News between 1998 and 2001, during the years that I began a re-investigation of the Ben Chester White murder, while a graduate student at the Univ. of Miss. ("Ole Miss"). As part of my investigation, I became aware that crimes committed on Federal property could be prosecuted under Federal law, regardless of court proceedings at the state or local level. This knowledge came from a case near Oxford, Miss. (location of Ole Miss) involving the shooting of students at a local Federal resort lake. This is the case law about that murder-- file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/Kendall%20v.%20United%20States.pdf. I then, once ABC News became involved, communicated that law to Mr. Phillips, who presented that to Brad Pigott, Esq., U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi [Mr. Pigott is now in private practice in Jackson, Miss.]. From that re-investigation by the FBI, and the re-prosecution of the sole surviving murderer, Ernest Avants, a further investigation and prosecution became possible for 2 murderers in 1964 that also took place in the Homochitto National Forest, of Charles Moore and Henry. H. Dee.) In addition, journalist and podcaster for Canadian Broadcasting, David Ridgen, became aware of my involvement when he was in Mississippi to investigate these murders for his film Mississippi Cold Case. Others aware of my involvement include then-Director of the Southern Studies program at Ole Miss, Charles R. Wilson, and then=publisher of The Natchez Democrat Kevin Cooper, as well as other academics at Ole Miss and locals in southwest Mississippi. My own background, in addition to my work with Southern Studies, includes graduate work in Early Modern literature at the University of Virginia (M.Phil.), Millsaps College (B.A. with Honors), UC Berkeley (Classical Greek), and Oxford University (summer program under auspices of the Southern Association of Liberal Arts Colleges). Further, the neighbors of my family in the little community where my grandparents farm was located are the "experts" on the history of that community, called variously the "Sandy Creek" community, or "Bude Camp", or "Homochitto Camp" (it was, from 1928-1948, a lumber camp for the Homochitto Lumber Company) and the families, both black and white, who live, or lived, there. Dmmsj00 (talk) 22:50, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
