Rogers Hamilton
Age 18
A popular young Black man who supported his family
Lowndes County, Alabama
October 22, 1957
Rogers Hamilton, 18, lived with his mother and siblings in a sharecropper shack in rural Alabama. He had been the man of the house since his father died, when Hamilton was about 15, according to a reporter for The Anniston Star newspaper who interviewed the family in 2010. Hamilton’s relatives remembered the young Black man as sweet and handsome, popular with girls.
Early in the morning on October 22, 1957, someone drove up to Hamilton’s home and called out to him. In describing the incident to an investigator from the Alabama Department of Public Safety, his mother, Beatrice Hamilton, said she roused her son from bed and that he went outside.
Peering through a crack in the front door, Beatrice said she saw a white man talk to the teenager. The two then drove off in a green pickup truck and Beatrice, concerned, followed on foot. She said the truck stopped on a nearby road and that a man pointed a pistol at Hamilton. As Beatrice screamed for him not to kill her son, the man fired his pistol, and Hamilton slumped to the ground. After the man left, Beatrice approached her son’s body and shone a flashlight on his face, which is when she discovered he had been shot in the forehead and killed.
Initial Investigation
The Lowndes County sheriff asked the Alabama Department of Public Safety for help investigating the crime, and the latter launched a preliminary investigation.
Hamilton’s mother was among the people who talked to a state investigator, but he doubted her statement. The investigator said Beatrice’s emotional state may have caused her to misremember the details of her son’s death, according to a Department of Justice summary of the local investigation.
Rumors circulated that Hamilton had been killed because he was interested in a white woman or because he had hitched a ride with one. The county sheriff reportedly denied claims that the young man had been lynched. Fearing more violence, the family soon fled Alabama.
Till Act Status
In July 2008, the FBI opened an investigation into Hamilton’s death, based on media coverage of the killing. By then, some of the old investigative reports and records had been destroyed in a fire, the FBI learned from the Lowndes County Clerk’s Office.
Some records remained at the Alabama Department of Public Safety, but the FBI was unable to find or contact people named in the file — including Frank Ryals, the county sheriff who had dismissed lynching claims, and Oscar Corley, the state investigator who had doubted Hamilton’s mother. A records search indicated both Ryals and Corley may have died in the 1970s.
In 2010, with the case still open, The Anniston Star published a three-part story that included allegations by Hamilton’s family, but a Department of Justice memo summarizing the FBI investigation does not mention these claims.
The DOJ closed the case in 2016. In a memo, DOJ concluded that a successful prosecution would be “highly unlikely” due to “the lack of identifiable subjects” and because the original local investigative files had been destroyed.
The DOJ memo spells Hamilton’s name as “Roger.” It has been corrected here to “Rogers” based on multiple news reports.
Case Status closed
Closed 02/10/2016
Themes
- Closed Cases
- Men
About the Project
This multiplatform investigation draws upon more than two years of reporting, thousands of documents and dozens of first-hand interviews. FRONTLINE spoke to family and friends of the victims, and witnesses, some of whom had never been interviewed; current and former Justice Department officials and FBI agents, state and local law enforcement; lawmakers, civil-rights leaders and investigative journalists, to explore the Department of Justice’s reopening of civil rights-era cold cases under the 2008 Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.
In addition to an examination of the federal effort, the project features the first comprehensive, interactive list of all those whose cases were reopened by the Department of Justice. Today, the list stands at 151 names. Among the victims: voting rights advocates, veterans, Louisville’s first female prosecutor, business owners, mothers, fathers, and children.
The project consists of a web-based interactive experience, serialized podcast, a touring augmented-reality exhibit, documentary and companion education curriculum for high schools and universities.
A project like Un(re)solved would not be possible without the historic and contemporary contributions of universities, civil rights groups, and the press, particularly the Black press, who have ensured the ongoing public record of racist violence in the United States. To pay homage to these groups, the web interactive begins with a quote from journalist, activist and researcher Ida B. Wells, one of the first to document with precision the horrors of racial terror in America. “The way to right wrongs,” she wrote, “is to turn the light of truth upon them.”
At the outset of the project, FRONTLINE forged a relationship with Northeastern University’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ), bringing them on as an academic partner. Launched in 2007 by Distinguished Law Professor Margaret Burnham, CRRJ is a mission-driven program of interdisciplinary teaching, research and policy analysis on race, history, and criminal justice. Their work has expanded beyond the names on the Justice Department’s list, archiving documents in over 1,000 cases of racially motivated homicides.
With support from the CRRJ, FRONTLINE reporters gathered what could be known about the individuals on the list, conducting interviews with family, friends and witnesses, delving into newspaper archives and gathering documentation including headstone applications, draft cards and archival photographs.
At the heart of the project has been a drive to center the voices of the families of those on the list. FRONTLINE partnered with StoryCorps to record nearly two dozen oral histories with victims’ next of kin, which are featured both in the web-based interactive and traveling AR exhibit. These oral histories will also be archived in the National Library of Congress.
To lead the creative vision for the web experience and installation, FRONTLINE partnered with Ado Ato Pictures, a premier mixed reality studio founded by artist, filmmaker, and technologist Tamara Shogaolu.
Shogaolu rooted the visuals in the powerful symbolism of trees. In the United States, trees evoke the ideal of liberty, but also speak to an oppressive history of racially motivated violence. In Persian myth, trees are humanity’s ancestors, while in Toraja, Indonesia, they serve as sacred burial sites.
“I was really inspired by looking at the role of the tree as a symbol in American history” Shogaolu said. “It’s been looked at as a symbol of freedom, we look at it as a connector between generations, and also there’s the association of trees with racial terror.” When designing the creative vision for Un(re)solved Shogaolu wondered whether she might be able to reclaim the symbol of the tree. “As a person of color, we’re often terrified of being in isolated places in the woods. And I thought it was kind of crazy that there are natural environments that instinctually give great fear because of this connection with racial terror and I wanted to reclaim that — to turn these into beautiful spaces.”
Un(re)solved weaves imagery of trees, which also recall family ties, into patterns and textures from the American tradition of quilting. Among enslaved African Americans forbidden to read or write, quilts provided an important space to document family stories. Today, quilting remains a creative outlet rich with story and tradition for many American communities.
We invite you to enter this forest of quilted memories — a testimony to the lives of these individuals, and the multi-generational impact of their untimely, unjust loss.
(Credits to come)