A father's anguish

A FATHER'S ANGUISH

SUN HERALD
By ANITA LEE
Posted on Sun, Jul. 24, 2005

A career of truth, and courage

Bill Minor began his journalism career in August 1947 as Mississippi correspondent for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and still works as a Jackson-based columnist syndicated in 25 newspapers statewide, including the Sun Herald.

The Navy combat veteran was inducted into the Mississippi Press Association Hall of Fame in 1991 and was the first recipient, in 1997, of the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism.

Minor, a witness to the civil rights movement from its inception, has inspired and mentored generations of journalists.

A few of the landmark civil rights stories Minor has covered:

His first assignment, the funeral of Theodore G. Bilbo, Mississippi governor and U.S. Senator from Poplarville, 1947

Emmett Till's murder, Tallahatchie County, 1955

Mack Charles Parker's lynching, Poplarville, 1959

Gov. Ross Barnett's rebellion and surrender over integration of the University of Mississippi, Oxford, 1962

The slaying of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, Jackson, 1963

Two trials of Byron De La Beckwith for Evers' murder, both resulting in hung juries, Jackson, 1964

Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church burning, Neshoba County, 1964

The slaying of three civil rights workers, Neshoba County, 1964

Federal conspiracy convictions against seven of 18 men charged in the 1964 civil rights workers' slayings, Meridian, 1967

School desegregation in Mississippi, the last holdout in the nation, middle and late 1960s

Creation, activities and dismantling of the state's segregationist spy agency, the Sovereignty Commission, 1956-1973

De La Beckwith's conviction for Evers' murder, Jackson, 1994

Edgar Ray Killen's conviction in the 1964 slaying of the three civil rights workers, Philadelphia, 2005

A living legend and tireless advocate for justice now finds the legal process holds the key to his son's future

Minor leans onto his cane, crosses behind a row of benches and hobbles up the center aisle. The courtroom, with ceilings too high to measure, melts into the background as jurors follow his progress.

At last, he takes a seat three rows behind the court rail separating spectators from criminal defendants.

He sits beside his 80-year-old wife, aptly referred to in the dedication of his 2001 book, "Eyes on Mississippi," as "my long-suffering wife Gloria."

He still has a full head of hair to match cotton-white eyebrows that bristle above crystal blue eyes. The eyes of his oldest son, Paul, are the same light blue.

Bill Minor has covered momentous events in this very courtroom during the course of his 58-year career in journalism. For the first time, he is here without a notebook.

His son, who is 59 years old, could spend life in prison if convicted on only a few of the 15 charges against him.

Paul Minor turns from the defense table, giving his father a quick nod and smile. Paul Minor had joined the nation's elite echelon of trial attorneys before the federal government indicted him and three judges two years ago on charges of bribery and fraud.

He has hired the best defense team his millions can buy.

They set out last week to counter more than a month of prosecution evidence and testimony about Minor's $240,000 in publicly undisclosed financial assistance to the judges. Prosecutors tried to tie the money to rulings by the judges in Minor's cases.

For better or worse, they interjected Bill Minor into the trial by including a libel cased filed against him, Armistead v. Minor.

Using the evidence to their advantage, defense attorneys are showing the jury of 10 blacks and two whites who Bill Minor is and what he stands for.

Simply put, Bill Minor is one of the few visible white heroes from Mississippi's civil rights movement.

He arrived in 1947 as a young reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

He wrote of lynchings, bloodied bodies, hung juries, a governor who tried to face down the nation to keep Ole Miss white, segregationist societies and the Ku Klux Klan, and, in recent times, of exorcisms and reparations in county courthouses where white men met justice at long last.

One of Mississippi's preeminent appellate attorneys, Luther Munford, took the stand as a witness for Paul Minor.

"Who is Bill Minor?" asked Paul Minor's attorney, Abbe Lowell.

"One of my heroes," Munford said. He explained that he grew up in Jackson, where the statewide newspapers, the morning Clarion-Ledger and afternoon Jackson Daily News, held sway. Both were considered organs for segregation during the civil rights era.

"In Jackson in the 1960s, if you wanted to know the truth about what was going on, you didn't read the Jackson newspapers," Munford said. He said he read the Memphis paper or Bill Minor in the Times-Picayune.

Munford said he represented Bill Minor in Armistead v. Minor. The latter was sued over a 1998 column he wrote about Rex Armistead.

Munford described Armistead as a wealthy Delta planter with a racist history, a former Mississippi highway patrolman and private investigator. Munford told the jury Armistead had, among other things, fired five shots into a women's dormitory at Jackson State College (now university) in 1970.

Highway patrolmen had been sent to the campus to quell anti-war protests. Two young people died when the patrol opened fire.

Bill Minor detailed Armistead's past, Munford said, when a wealthy Republican engaged Armistead to investigate Bill Clinton's Arkansas days.

Bill Minor, he said, "was being sued by a rich guy with a racist, violent history simply because Bill told the truth about him. Bill didn't have a lot of money and this guy did."

Munford believed Armistead filed the lawsuit to intimidate Bill Minor.

"What was fortunate was that he had a son like Paul who could even the scales of justice."

A lower court judge threw out the lawsuit against Bill Minor, but Armistead appealed to the state Supreme Court. Munford said he had seven boxes of legal files on the case. Prosecutors found Paul Minor's name as an attorney in the original response to the lawsuit and on one other document.

Munford said Paul Minor paid the $75,000 legal bill, but did not work as an attorney on the case.

Oliver Diaz voted with seven other Supreme Court justices to uphold the lower court's decision to throw out the case. At the time, in 2002, Paul Minor had secured a $75,000 loan for Diaz's wife, given Diaz cash to make payments and solicited $77,000 from other attorneys to pay off the loan.

Prosecutors think his vote in Bill Minor's case is evidence of bribery, even though they admit the Supreme Court did the right thing.

The jury will decide.

Bill Minor poked his head in the courtroom door while Munford was testifying.

Mornings, he is committed to exercise for his health. A stroke he suffered in 1994 left him physically frail, but he can still rattle off the date three civil rights workers were buried under a dam in Neshoba County, tell you how many men were tried for the crime, how many were convicted and when and where the trial took place.

He recently sat in the courtroom for closing arguments in the Edgar Ray Killen trial. Killen walked free for decades, but in June was convicted of manslaughter in the case.

Bill Minor writes a column currently syndicated in 25 newspapers. And he's working on a book of memoirs.

Afternoons, he comes to court. The bench, he said, is hard. On this day he has driven here in a downpour with Gloria. He shakes off the rain before making his way across the courtroom. Several jurors turn to watch.

He describes the ordeal of this trial simply and briefly: "It is the most agonizing experience I've ever had."

Bill Minor has distinguished himself as the dean of Mississippi journalism. The scope and depth of his career - as a reporter, editor and syndicated columnist covering Mississippi politics and civil rights - is unsurpassed.

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