John Earl Reese Memorial Service Tatum, TX

John Earl Reese Family

(left) his Step Mom Alma Reese (she is the mother to his other siblings), (back left) William Reese, (front left) John Albert Reese, (front middle) niece, (back middle right) Sharon Reese Thompson, (second front right) Audrey Reese Morgan (back right) nephew

Saturday October 23, 2010 at 9:00 a.m., Services for the historical unveiling of John Earl Reese memorial service were underway.  Northeastern University School of Law  Civil Rights and Restorative Justice.

• 9:00 a.m. Graveside Ceremony at Smith Chapel Cemetery was held. Invocation & Occasion by Rev. Lewis Thompson Jr with the unveiling of a new headstone next to his old stone.
• 9:45 a.m.Tatum Public Library commemorating a plaque in John Earl Reese honor Remarks by Mayor Phil Corey
• 10:25 a.m. At former CR 2174 unveiling in John Earl Rees Road, remarks by Mike Pepper, Commissioner, Pct.2
• 11:00 a.m. Smith Chapel Baptist Church unveiling of the Civil Rights Marker by Clifford Harkless
• 11:00 a.m. Smith Chapel Baptist Church Sanctuary of The Church recognition by Margie Centers with Special remarks by Dr. M. Burnham, Northeastern Law Center and her staff
• 11:50 a.m. Closing Pray by Jamie Brown/ Refreshments were served afterwards.

People mostly responsible for making this memorial service happen are from the Northeastern University School of Law. They have dedicated years of  commitment, travel, research and interviews, along with personal time and efforts to obtain accurate facts and information. (pictured below)

Nathaniel Johnson, Kaylie Simon, Dr. Margaret Burnham & (cousin) Jocy Faye Nelson Crockett

John Earl Reese (cousin) Bonnie Fletcher, (aunts) Irene & Gladye Reese

It was a very emotional service. From graveside services to the moment we approached the installation of the plaque in the public library until the very end. All speakers spoke with great sensitivity and emotion.

While watching my sister as she went to each event trying to hold back her emotions. Also, watching John Earl Reese aunts, and cousins as they looked on. I could see the sadness on their faces. It was as if we were attending an actual funeral service.

I wasn't born when John Earl Reese was alive, but my sister Jocy F. Nelson Crockett would keep his memory alive forever because she was always talking about him and reminding us of that terrible tragedy from which seemed to be not so long ago.

As we approached the road re-named in John Earl Reese honor Commissioner Mike Pepper reminded us that this is same the road that John Earl Reese walked to school on every day.Commissioner Mike Pepper spoke with so much passion. You could actually see John Earl Rees as a little boy walking down that old road. After the sign was revealed as Joyce Faye Crockett touched the sign she could no longer hold back her tears. You could see everyone in the crowd being moved with emotion.

We moved across the road to Smith Chapel Baptist Church for unveiling of the historical marker. It was a somber feeling in the air. Clifford Harkless spoke passionately about the meaning of the marker and why it is placed where it is. 

The historical marker stands across the road from the old Mayflower school where John Earl Reese attended. The school is no longer a school. Northeastern University School of Law Nathaniel Johnson also spoke of the honor of the historical marker and it's significance.

Johnnie Myrle Nelson Arthur's children

Joyce Faye Nelson Crockett's children

Joyce Faye Nelson Crockett with her children, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren

Jocy Faye Nelson Crockett sisters (left end) Irvia Nelson Sammon, (center) children, nieces and nephews (right end) Shirley Nelson Beckworth  

Smith Chapel Baptist Church Johnnie M. Thompson Johnson started the program with songs. Margie F. Centers was in charge of recognition and introductions.  Kaylie Simon spoke about the joy of spending time with Joyce Faye Nelson Crockett and  Johnnie M. Thompson Johnson. They assisted with a lot of the history, background information and detail of the shooting and murder.She also spoke of the love and compassion she has felt being among the people in the community

Guest speaker Dr. Margaret Burnham spoke with a lot of compassion as she talked about the life John Earl Reese and his possibilities. What he could should and might have been if he was alive.

Dr. Margaret Burnham reminded us that John Earl Reese would probably be around her age and probably have a family and children of his own. It was no telling what kind of contributions he could have made to society. But, we will never know because he never got the chance he deserved to have. His life was stolen from him. What a shame and a lost to his family, friends and loved ones and society. Dr. Margaret Burnham also spoke with compassion and truth in her voice.

Joyce Faye Nelson Crockett sisters (left) Irvia Sammon,(center left) Gwendolyn Deckard, historian China Galland (center right), and Evelyn Nelson (right)

(left) Gussey L. Daniel classmate of Joyce Faye Nelson Crockett  (center) Kaylie Simon, (right) Dr.Margaret Burnham.

Gussey L. Daniel dedicated his personal painting of a school bus riddled with bullets being driven by Horace Thompson and a bus load of children on their way to Mayflower school back in the 1950's. The other sites are of the school they attended and a head stone in memory of John Earl Reese.

Someone cried out in the front of me. When I looked up and I saw John Earl Reese's baby sister Sharon Reese Thompson. My heart went out to her. I felt so much compassion and heart break for the Reese family I had to talk to them or try to comfort them.  They began to talk about their childhood. Most of their lives was spent watching their father consumed with the lost of his son and  he adamantly refused to talk about him. They were never allowed to bring up his name to their father.

• Sharon Reese Thompson- said she had just found out about the memorial services a few days earlier because of by reading a article on the Internet. After reading the article she contacted her family because they all needed to be here. She went on to say she spend quite a bit of her time researching any information she can about her brother. She went on to talk about how painful it was for her not to know about her brother. She always wondered about him and felt like a part of her had been missing all those years. Yet, no one would talk about him.  "The entire memorial was wonderful. For the first time since I was a little girl I finally know the truth about what really happened to my eldest brother, who I will never ever truly know. Just knowing what I know today is a blessing. Knowing you and your family is a blessing as well. Thank God for the people who had the courage to see this investigation reopened  I thank God for all the hard work and dedication the researchers put in to this project".

• Audrey Reese Morgan- Thanked everyone for every thing and how she was pleased with the services. She told me that her older living brother John Albert Reese was the one in the family that most favored their oldest brother John Earl Reese.

• William Reese-  talked about it being painful for him. He grew up like his sisters wondering about the brother he never knew along with feeling the void in his life.

• John Albert Reese- talked about the pain of being named by his aunts John Earl Reese.  It was too painful for his father. His father told his sisters they had to change that name because nobody else could ever be called John Earl Reese.  People would called him John Earl Reese for years. When people started calling him John Albert Reese he had a hard time getting used to it.

You could clearly see the pain on their face as they spoke about their brother and father. Their father would carry the pain of loosing his son John Earl Reese deep in his heart for the rest of his life. After the death of John Earl Reese his father married a girl named Alma. They went on to have (2) sons and (2) daughters. He was also a proud grandfather to (8) grandchildren, and (4) great-grandchildren. Beloved father John Travis Reese past away June 23,1986.

John Earl Reese sisters and brothers are leading good productive lives with families of their own. They  are the sisters and brothers left behind. They now carry the pain from years of watching their father suffer from the sad and tragic death a brother they never knew. May the pain of the past be lessened and the memories for the future be sweeter.

John Earl Reese, 16, was murdered in a drive-by shooting while sitting in Hughes Cafe on Texas Highway 149 with his cousins Joyce Nelson, 13, and her sister Johnnie Myrle Nelson, 15.

He died the following morning October 23, 1955.

"Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.. For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee."


Isaiah 41:10, 13

Historical Marker Tatum, TX and Mayflower Community Honors One of Civil Rights Movement

Image by Tony the Misfit via FlickrMarshall News Messenger September 19, 2010 Historical marker honors one of civil rights movement’s earliest martyrs

On Oct. 23 - 55 years after the night Reese lost his life - the few remaining alumni of the Mayflower School will join the entire Tatum community to dedicate a memorial in the name of John Earl Reese. Clifford Harkless, who grew up in the small community just north of Tatum, said he hopes it can help heal old wounds while also educating future generations about the mistakes of the past.

The murderers were two white men, Perry Dean Ross, 22, and Joseph Reagan Simpson, 21. Both were convicted of the crime, but never spent a day in jail. Their sentences of five years were suspended.

Related articles

• Northeastern University School of Law

• Civil Rights Leaders (chicagonow.com)
• Obama's Movement (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)

The 55-year-old Mayflower Murder Of John Earl Reese

Image via Wikipedia

February 8, 2010 Jocy Faye Nelson Crockett talks to the Dallas Morning News about the 55-year-old Mayflower Murder of John Earl Reese.

FBI takes new look at white men's killing of East Texas black teen in 1955. No justice after 55 years in racial killing. It was just a "playful night of gunfire," a top investigator for the Texas Rangers said.

The Nine bullets fired by two white men into a rural East Texas cafe-leaving a black teenager dead-had nothing to do with race, most insisted.

History no longer agrees. On that night 55 years ago, three of those bullets struck and killed John Earl Reese, a 16-year-old high school student, as he danced in the Gregg County cafe. Two white men later said they had just been trying to "scare the Negroes" when they fired into the building.

They knew the cafe, on State Highway 149 south of Longview, was a popular hangout for blacks. Reese, hit in the head and neck, died later at a Longview hospital. His two teenage cousins were shot in the arm. Decades later, the Dallas office of the FBI has placed Reese's death on a list of 108 "unsolved or inadequately solved racially motivated homicides from the civil rights era."

What happened the night of Oct. 22, 1955, is the subject of a "cold-case initiative," launched by the federal agency in 2006 but revealed only in November. That's when the FBI appealed for help in identifying the victims' next of kin in 33 of those civil rights cases dating to between 1950 and 1970.

The Reese killing was on that list, the only case assigned to Dallas' FBI division. "We were trying to find a local relative to tell them that we were looking at the Reese case," said Mark White, a spokesman for the agency's local office. After nearly three years of digging, the FBI said it was ready to reveal the results of the initial investigations, none of which have led to a trial. "In half of the 108 cases, we know who did it and they are deceased," said Chris Allen, a national FBI spokesman. "Nothing else can be done." It is not clear exactly what the FBI has learned about the Reese case.

The men convicted in the killing – who never spent a day in jail – have died, as have many of the other people involved. Investigators located Reese's cousin, one of the three people shot that night in 1955, only two months ago. Joyce Nelson Crockett is Reese's closest surviving relative. (Her sister, Johnnie Nelson Arthur, who also was wounded that day, died in 1976.) Crockett, a 67-year-old retiree who lives in Tatum, a Rusk County community 10 miles from where the shooting occurred, has doubts that anything good can come from reopening her cousin's case. "What can they do about it if every body's dead?" she said. "Some body's going to say they're sorry?"

The FBI contacted her in early December to prepare her for a letter from the Justice Department. She was told only that it would be hand-delivered by an FBI agent. 'They got away with it' The Reese case supposedly was solved in 1956 when Joe Reagan Simpson, 22, and Perry Dean Ross, 21, admitted the shooting. Ross was found guilty of murder without malice after a jury trial in April 1957. Simpson pleaded guilty to the same charge a few months later. Both men were given five-year jail sentences that were immediately suspended. The fact that neither had a criminal record was used to justify the lightest possible sentence. May 6, 1957 Time Magazine: Bad Day In Longview

But it was a disturbing outcome for the teens family and the Rusk County community of Mayflower, where Reese lived. The area had been terrorized by several middle-of-the-night shootings during 1955. On the night of Reese's killing, Ross and Simpson also sped through the rural black community. Ross fired a rifle at two nearby houses and an empty school bus used by black children. Simpson and Ross would later acknowledge three such drive-by shootings in Mayflower, although they were never charged in the incidents. "They said they didn't mean to kill anybody," Crockett recalled. "They got away with it." The lack of punishment kept Reese's murder case alive for civil rights activists.

In the 1980s, the shooting was unearthed by the Southern Poverty Law Center and claimed as one of the earliest murders in the civil rights era. In 1989, when the Civil Rights Memorial opened in Montgomery, Ala., Reese's name was on the list of "martyrs." It was the first public recognition of Reese's death as something greater than a personal loss to his family, said Crockett, who attended the monument's dedication. "You couldn't find a better person than John Earl," Crockett said. "There's no telling what he could have been." Looking for lapses The FBI isn't the only group looking into the unresolved civil rights cases. Several law schools have dispatched students to identify possible judicial and law enforcement lapses in the long-dormant cases, including Reese's.

"His case was treated very lightly by the state," said Margaret Burnham, a professor at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston. She also founded the school's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. Like other cold cases from the civil rights era, Reese's illustrates "the massive breakdown in law enforcement," she said.

"There were trials that were not fair, and justice was not achieved."
Burnham based her conclusions on law enforcement documents and court records her project found in the Texas State Archives in Austin and the Gregg County courthouse in Longview, where the murder trial took place.

The political climate in rural East Texas in 1955 was a major factor in the shooting, said Kaylie Simon, a Northeastern law student responsible for delving into Reese's case. "We are trying to rebuild the facts and put the record straight about what happened, what actions were taken and what actions were not taken." The records indicate that because of jurisdiction issues, the Texas Rangers took over the case two months after Reese was killed. Media reports at the time suggested that investigators dragged their feet for weeks after the killing. The records from the case indicate that:

•A local sheriff refused to investigate Reese's death, saying he was convinced "it was Negroes who done the shooting, not white folks," stated one report.

•The Texas Rangers conducted dozens of interviews focused on a bond election to build a new "colored" school in Mayflower.

•The Rangers identified two factions in the school district that were fighting over the location of the new school. A third faction, labeled "pretty wild characters," included Ross and Simpson.

•Ross admitted to investigators that his anger over the new school had "a great deal" to do with the shooting Capt. Bob Crowder, who headed the Rangers' investigation, concluded that the new school – which he considered a political issue and not a racial one – was behind the 1955 shooting.

As part of the investigation, most of the black witnesses were asked about racial discrimination in Mayflower and Tatum. They responded that they had never experienced it. In his summary of the investigation, Crowder described all the black witnesses as "good" and "humble." Case not closed The resurfacing of Reese's case could be troublesome for residents of the East Texas communities that are involved.

Cliff Harkless, who was 7 and living in Mayflower when Reese was killed, said he was concerned that allegations might be raised about people who cannot defend themselves. "With a lot of these people dead and gone, we can't say that it was all factual," he said of the statements contained in the unearthed documents. "This was one case where justice possibly was not served, but bringing up those names is not helping."

Harkless, director of human resources for the Tatum Independent School District, said race relations have improved significantly in Rusk County. "We've come a long way in that area," he said. Nonetheless, the FBI's investigation is not yet closed, said the Dallas spokesman. Burnham and her law students in Boston are hoping to revive community interest in Reese's death if only to promote fuller understanding of what happened.

"A legal remedy would be difficult because so many of the people in this case have died," said Simon, the law student. "But it's possible there could be some kind of memorial or even an apology to Reese's family."

Crockett admitted she would like some recognition of her cousin's death. But she was equally worried that the local reaction might be negative. "Every time somebody brings this up," she said, "people start telling me to leave it in the past." Reported by Sherry Jacobson/Dallas Morning News