DON’T say television never did anything for you.
Last year Connie Chung and “20/20” went digging into the murders of two civil rights workers and a black farm hand in the south in the ’60s. Although it wasn’t any secret who the murderers were at the time, no one was ever convicted, and the trials – when they took place – were a sham.
The Chung segment brought back to light and life the murder of Ben Chester White, a 67-year-old farm hand in Mississippi who was ambushed and murdered by Klansmen out for a little sport.
In another case, Chung spoke to an FBI informant and former Imperial Wizard of the Klan who became a double agent after his closest friends admitted to him the brutal slayings of two college kids who were civil rights workers – Charles Moore and Henry Dee in 1964. He tells how his fellow Klansman beat the two students and then tied them to an engine block and threw them in the river – alive.
The feds knew this. They had an informant who told them everything and a Navy diver who even found the engine block and a skull – and still the murders went “unsolved.”
When Moore’s brother, a decorated soldier in Vietnam, returned from the war, he took a second college degree in honor of his slain brother. In a full-hour segment tonight, Chung revisits what has happened since the original program ran last year.
While you may think of Chung as a glamourous news reader, you may want to think again. Chung goes knocking on trailer doors and gets the old racists, witnesses and jurors to come out – and even gets them to talk.
Shocking still are comments by one juror, a former Klansman, who voted to acquit in the White trial: “The only thing they proved to me was that that nigger was dead. Who done it? They ain’t proved sh**.”
Chung and crew did an incredible job of research, plowing through boxes of records thrown all over basement floors, digging in to find 34-year-old hotel receipts and bank statements.
In the case of Ben Chester White, “20/20” managed to find the missing court documents that show a confession by – and then an acquittal of – a Klansman named Ernest Avants.
Chung’s crew managed to find Avants, who now lives in a creepy trailer and looks like he escaped from “Deliverance.” He says to Chung: “A white man has run this world. A white man has run this United States. That’s why it’s great like it is. The Jews owned Adams County, and the Catholics run it. And the niggers enjoyed it.”
While it was clear that a miscarriage of justice was done way back when, it’s also clear that Avants couldn’t be tried again for murder (double jeopardy), or even civil rights violations (the statute of limitations has run out).
So it’s to the credit of the ABC researchers who did come up with the overlooked fact that since White was killed on national park land, he could, in fact, be retried in federal court.
Last week Avants was arrested and indicted for murder. The prosecutors credited ABC and “20/20.”
Chung went to the bust. As Avants gets led away, his wife runs after her screaming, “Don’t you have any Christian in you?”
Right.
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