Charles Eddie Moore
Birth date:
August 10, 1944
Death date:
May 2, 1964
Age at Death:
19
About
Charles Eddie Moore was a 19 year old college student from Franklin County, Mississippi.
On May 2, 1964, Charles Eddie Moore, a college student, and Henry Hezekiah Dee, a millworker, both 19 and from Franklin County, Mississippi, were picked up by KKK members while they were hitchhiking in Meadville. They were abducted, interrogated and tortured in a nearby forest, locked in a trunk of a car, driven across state lines, chained to a Jeep motor block and train rails, and dropped alive into the Mississippi River to die.
Moore and Dee's mangled torsos were discovered on July 12 and 13, 1964 during the frantic FBI search for James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, the three civil rights workers who disappeared on June 21. When it was discovered that the bodies were those of two black men and not those of the civil rights workers, two of whom were white, media interest evaporated and the press moved on.
Was justice served?
No. While the FBI investigated the case and arrested two suspects in November 1964, the district attorney concluded that there was insufficient evidence for prosecution. The case was dropped by local authorities, some of whom were complicit in the crime, according to FBI and HUAC documents.