Adlena Hamlett
Age 76
A retired teacher and civil rights pioneer
Near Sidon, Mississippi
January 11, 1966
Adlena Hamlett, 76, had retired from her job as a teacher when, on January 11, 1966, she accompanied her longtime friend Birdia Keglar and three men on a trip to Jackson, Mississippi. Both Hamlett and Keglar had recently testified about the denial of voting rights to Black people in the state, and they went to Jackson to see a film produced by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. On the drive back, their car collided with an oncoming vehicle on a highway near the town of Sidon. The men survived, but Keglar and Hamlett both died in the crash. The other driver, a white man identified as Brown Bruce Jr., was taken to the hospital and survived.
Initial Investigation
The Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol investigated the crash and concluded that Bruce had been on the wrong side of the road when he collided head-on with Keglar and Hamlett’s car, according to a crash investigator’s report saved by Hamlett’s family and reviewed by the FBI. The report did not say whether Bruce had been found to be under the influence, but it did note that the road where the crash occurred was straight, level and dry. Bruce was charged with driving on the wrong side of the road, the report stated.
Till Act Status
More than 40 years passed before The Guardian published an article in 2007 about the deaths, stating that the victims’ families had long suspected foul play. They believed Keglar and Hamlett had been forced off the road and murdered, possibly by KKK members, in retaliation for their activism. Both women had been threatened in the past, The Guardian reported.
Two years later, a law student from Northeastern University, on behalf of the school’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ), traveled to Mississippi to investigate. In its annual report, CRRJ said a witness, who claimed never to have been been interviewed before, “established that there was no foul play involved in the crash; it was purely accidental.”
The NAACP referred The Guardian article to the federal government. The FBI opened a review of the case in 2008 and interviewed the victims’ friends and relatives, as well as one of the crash survivors.
Two of the three men who were in the car with Keglar and Hamlett had since died, but the FBI was able to find the third survivor. He recalled sleeping in the backseat of the car on the drive home from Jackson and waking to the sound of screeching brakes. He told the FBI that the impact of the crash caused the hood of their car to come loose and break through the windshield, decapitating Keglar and Hamlett. He also said Bruce had been driving drunk, according to a 2011 Department of Justice memo about the case.
At least one of Keglar’s relatives doubted the story, according to the DOJ memo. The memo also said that people who knew the victims told the FBI about veiled threats “from unidentified sources” following the crash, and that the trip to Jackson had been a secret that “someone” who wasn’t supposed to know had found out about.
The FBI also reviewed an interview recorded in 2007 with a funeral home employee who responded to the crash in 1966. The employee recounted finding Keglar’s body on the side of the road and said, “it was clear that she had been murdered,” according to the DOJ memo. The memo noted the employee misremembered the number of victims.
The bureau found Bruce’s death certificate, which showed he had died in 1996. Given that he was dead, and without proof that the crash was anything other than an accident, the Department of Justice closed the case again in 2011. “Although there appears to be speculation and rumors that something more nefarious occurred, there is insufficient evidence to disprove the account of the sole survivor, whose account is corroborated by the available documentary evidence,” the department wrote.
Case Status closed
Closed 05/26/2011
Themes
- Closed Cases
- Women
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)