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...O'Quinn, the back outside of the front gate of Whitaker Plantation, the 235-acre family land.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Clarence got his mother and wounded father back into the car and drove to the Field Memorial Community Hospital. Samuel O'Quinn died en route, in the arms of his wife, Ida. He was 58 years old and the father of 11 children. No one has ever been charged with the crime.
Today, Laura and Clarence, now ages 81 and 80, are living in Springfield, Massachusetts, along with two other siblings, Phalba and Rance. They are one of numerous families who are still waiting for justice in racial murders from the civil rights era. "It would give closure for us," said Phalba O'Quinn Plummer, who is now 71. "It would really help a lot for all of us to know what happened."
The FBI is currently reviewing approximately 100 cases that it may reopen; 84 of the victims have been named, and of those, 34 are from Mississippi. The true number of unresolved cases, however, is unknown. A review of a relatively narrow set of FBI and state documents found references to at least seven murders in Mississippi that are not on the published FBI list.
The lack of justice for Samuel O'Quinn and other Blacks murdered during the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and '60s is the haunting background for current events that every so often lay bare the broken promises of a supposedly post-civil rights society: the double standard of justice meted out to the Jena 6; the vast numbers of people, overwhelmingly Black, treated as disposable during and after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita; the Klan-like torture and rape of Megan Williams.
Last June, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
have been removed from this article.
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