Mack Charles Parker
Mack Charles Parker was 23, a Black Army veteran and truck driver from Lumberton, Mississippi, who had returned home to work and support his widowed mother and younger siblings. He was held in the Pearl River County Jail in Poplarville in late April 1959. According to a 2022 PBS report, a group of hooded men broke into the jail, with the help of the jailer, took him from his cell and killed him. His body was found weeks later in the Pearl River, shot and weighed down with chains, and an FBI autopsy report listed a penetrating wound to the heart as the cause of death. Grand juries declined to indict anyone for the killing, and the FBI reopened the investigation in 2009.
Cause of death, as reported: Taken from custody and lynched. A mob took Mack Charles Parker from the Pearl River County Jail, with the jailer's help, and killed him; the FBI autopsy found a penetrating heart wound, and the Federal Civil Rights Commission also described a lynching.
Reported by: FBI report (autopsy) (outside investigators); Federal Civil Rights Commission report (outside investigators); Southern Christian Leadership Conference (advocates); State Press editorial (reporters); Jackson Advocate report on the grand jury and FBI investigation (reporters); New Orleans TV station (reporters).
News reports (10)
- Arkansas State Press, May 8, 1959, page 4
- Arkansas State Press, May 15, 1959, page 5
- Atlanta Daily World, May 17, 1959, page 1
- Arkansas State Press, May 29, 1959, page 4
- Jackson Advocate, May 30, 1959, page 1
- Jackson Advocate, September 5, 1959, page 1
- Jackson Advocate, November 7, 1959, page 1
- Jackson Advocate, January 23, 1960, page 8
- Atlanta Daily World, November 26, 1961, page 7
- Mack Charles Parker