Stanley Nelson

Stanley Nelson has been investigating Civil Rights-era cold case murders for 15 years. Over the past five years, he has been researching and writing, “Klan of Devils: The Murder of a Black Louisiana Deputy Sheriff.”

The book covers what is believed to be the only case of the Civil Rights-era in which Klansmen targeted Black law officers.

His work was based not only on interviews and never before released FBI files on the attack of the two Black deputies with the Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office in 1965, but also on recollections of two retired FBI agents. One of those men, the late Ted Gardner, who helped investigate the murder of Deputy Oneal Moore and the wounding of his partner Deputy Creed Rogers, provided Nelson with detailed information about the attack and left him a trail to follow.

The book outlines the Klan’s attempt to defeat the white sheriff of Washington Parish, who eventually hired and stood in support of the work of Moore and Rogers. The Klan wanted to take total control of Washington Parish and felt the best way to do that would be remove the sheriff and replace him with a Klansman. By doing this, the Klan planned to run Civil Rights workers out of the parish, extinguish local civil rights efforts and preserve segregation forever.

But the Klan failed to defeat the sheriff in 1964. After his re-election, Sheriff Dorman Crowe hired the two Black deputies as he had promised the African-American community. A year and a day later, Klansmen riding in a pickup ambushed Moore and Rogers one night as they patrolled in a sheriff’s office car.

Nelson, who served for years as editor of the Concordia Sentinel, has written extensively about the Klan and civil rights. His first book, “Devils Walking: Klan Murders Along the Mississippi in the 1960s,” unveils the inner workings of the Silver Dollar Group, a secret Klan terrorist cell whose members symbolized their mission by carrying a silver dollar minted in the year of their birth.

Nelson was named a Pulitzer finalist in 2011 for local reporting, particularly for his series of articles in the Concordia Sentinel on the 1964 murder of African-American shoe shop owner in Ferriday, LA. He also investigated seven other murders connected to the Silver Dollar Group.

An adjunct professor at the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication, Nelson collaborates with Professor Chris Drew in working with students investigating Civil Rights-era cold cases and Civil Rights-era Black history.

Novelist Greg Iles based his Natchez Burning trilogy in part on Nelson’s work on the Silver Dollar Group. Iles also based the character Henry Sexton on Nelson.

Nelson was awarded the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism in 2011 by the University of Oregon School of Journalism and The Tom and Pat Gish Award in 2011 presented by the Institute of Rural Journalism and Community Issues, School of Journalism and Telecommunication, University of Kentucky.