Andrew Lee Anderson
Age 16
A Black teen in rural Arkansas
Marion, Arkansas
July 17, 1963
Andrew Lee Anderson was a Black teenager who lived in rural Crittenden County, Arkansas. On July 17, 1963, he was mowing a lawn in the local town of Marion.
Around noon that day, the white mother of an 8-year-old girl expected her daughter home for lunch. When the girl didn’t come, the woman drove down the street looking for her. According to a Department of Justice memo about the case, the woman would later testify she saw her daughter running down the street, muddy and hysterical, with Anderson running behind her.
The girl then allegedly told her mother Anderson had tried to sexually assault her. According to the woman, Anderson ran away, and she followed him in her car. Several other people, including at least five sheriff deputies, all white, joined in the pursuit. At one point, Anderson ran into a bean field. One of the men shot at him, hitting him in the leg and severing an artery. The deputies transported him to the hospital for treatment, but Anderson died within a few hours.
Initial Investigation
A coroner’s inquest was launched into Anderson’s death. According to the Department of Justice memo, one witness testified they believed the girl’s stepfather, Sam Burns, had shot Anderson with a deer rifle. Burns admitted to reporters that he had chased Anderson into the field but denied having shot him. Although he was present during the inquiry, Burns did not testify.
A media report quoted the Crittenden County sheriff as saying the deputies had fired several shots at the boy during the pursuit, but according to the DOJ memo, the deputies contradicted that media report, testifying that they did not know who had shot at the teenager. The jury ruled the incident an “excusable homicide,” based on an Arkansas law that allowed any private citizen or officer to use firearms to take a person into custody on a felony charge.
The ruling was protested by a group representing 60 Black churches in the area, who published a statement in the West Memphis Times asking for further investigation. Another article quoted local Reverend W.E. Battle as saying: “The trial wasn’t a trial. We want to know who shot the boy and we want to know whether they could have caught him without shooting.” The district attorney said his office stood by the ruling.
Around that time, an official from the Arkansas NAACP sent a telegram to the DOJ, asking for an investigation and alleging that Anderson had indicated he wanted to surrender before he was shot. The FBI interviewed the official and one other community member. It is unclear whether an initial federal investigation went beyond those two interviews.
Anderson’s killing came nine years after the murder of another Crittenden County resident, the Black businessman Isadore Banks, whose case also remains unsolved.
Till Act Status
In 2007, Anderson’s name was published by the Southern Poverty Law Center on a list of Black people who had died under suspicious circumstances during the civil rights era. The next month, a Memphis TV station interviewed two of Anderson’s sisters who said they still hoped to find justice for his shooting.
Later that year, the FBI opened an investigation into the circumstances around Anderson’s death, prompted by the media coverage, according to the DOJ memo. They located the FBI report from 1963, which included a transcript of testimony given to the coroner’s office. They also found death certificates for Sam Burns and several other people who had pursued Anderson.
The case was closed in 2010, but the DOJ’s memo redacted the legal analysis explaining why it chose to do so — a redaction not seen in similar cases. The memo also misstates the date of Anderson’s death.
Case Status closed
Closed 04/09/2010
Themes
- Children
- Closed Cases
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)