Olen Burrage Dies at 82; Linked to Killings in 1964
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: March 18, 2013
Olen Burrage, a Ku Klux Klan member who owned the Mississippi farm where the bodies of three slain civil rights workers were found in 1964, died on Friday in Meridian, Miss. He was 82.
FBI, via Associated Press
The bodies of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were found at the site of a dam Mr. Burrage was building on his farm in Philadelphia, Miss., in June 1964.
Associated Press
Their station wagon was used to transport their bodies, then burned.
His death was announced by the McClain-Hays Funeral Home in Philadelphia, Miss. No cause was given.
The killing of the voter-registration volunteers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney on the night of June 21-22 in Philadelphia shocked the nation, leading to the passage of the Voting Rights Act the next year. Along with bombings of black churches and other atrocities by the Klan, it also helped cement Mississippi’s image as a haven of bigotry. The case was the subject of several books and was dramatized in the 1988 movie “Mississippi Burning.”
After local prosecutors declined to bring murder charges against anyone, the federal government indicted 18 men on charges of conspiring to violate the civil rights of the trio on a lonely rural road in June 1964. (The federal government cannot bring murder charges, except for murders on federal property.) Mr. Burrage was one of eight who were acquitted in 1967. Seven were convicted, and the jury deadlocked on the other three.
Over the years family members, civil rights organizations, university research centers and others pressed Mississippi to pursue criminal cases against the original suspects in state court. In 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old preacher, was convicted of three counts of manslaughter by a state court; he is now serving a 60-year prison sentence for the Philadelphia killings.
With the death of Mr. Burrage, only one of the original 18 who were indicted in the homicides is still alive: Pete Harris, who was identified in testimony as a local Klan leader who summoned Klansmen to gather on the night of the killings.
Students of the case had suggested that the best chance at another successful prosecution was Mr. Burrage, who days before the killings bragged that a dam he was digging on his farmland would be a good place to bury civil rights workers, according to testimony in 1967. Mr. Burrage always said he was innocent.
Jerry Mitchell, a reporter for The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., who is one of the foremost experts on cases from the civil rights era, wrote that he called Mr. Burrage a few days before his death and that Mr. Burrage was upbeat and jovial until he asked him the question that many people have for many years wished he would answer: “How could a bunch of Klansmen have slipped onto your property in the dead of night, run a bulldozer and buried three bodies 15 feet down without you hearing or knowing something?”
Mr. Burrage hung up.
Olen Lavelle Burrage was born on March 16, 1930, in Neshoba County, Miss., where he lived his whole life except for a short time in Houston, where he worked as a bus driver. He served in the Marine Corps as a truck mechanic in the 1950s and was honorably discharged. He then started a trucking company, and in 1956 he bought his first farm. By 1964, he had acquired five other pieces of land, on which he grew corn and raised cattle.
In May 1964, he contracted to build a pond to water his cattle and raise fish. Construction, which was done over a two-month period, involved scooping out earth to make a small valley and to build a dam at the lower end of the valley to hold rainwater. There was no water in it during construction or when the bodies were found. The dam was to be about 250 feet long and 25 feet high.
At Mr. Burrage’s trial, family members and friends corroborated his alibi that he was at home and at church the night of the killings. In 1964, he told The New York Times: “I tell you I don’t know anybody that would kill them and put them on my property. All night I racked my brain trying to think of something that would help the investigation.”
An F.B.I. agent, John Proctor, claimed to have learned from an informant that Mr. Burrage had said something quite different, telling a roomful of Klansmen discussing the arrival of the civil rights workers, “Hell, I’ve got a dam that will hold a hundred of them.”
Horace Doyle Barnette, who was convicted for his part in the killings, told the F.B.I. this version of events:
The Klan had arranged for the bodies to arrive at Mr. Burrage’s property at midnight. Mr. Burrage was waiting in a 1957 Chevrolet to direct Klansmen to the dam site. After the bodies had been buried, the top of the grave was bladed off so it looked undisturbed.
Mr. Burrage and several other Klansmen then went to his trucking company garage, and Mr. Burrage filled a glass gallon jug with gasoline, to be used to burn the civil rights workers’ 1963 Ford station wagon, which had transported their bodies. He said he would pick up the men assigned to do the burning in a diesel truck as it would be a normal vehicle to see on the highway late at night.
Many who have studied the case have noted that Mr. Burrage consulted an agent of the federal Soil Conservation Service about possible subsidies for the dam he planned. It turned out he was eligible for the subsidies. He never followed up.
Mr. Burrage is survived by his wife of 62 years, Ruth Audine Clark Burrage; his sons, Olen Jr. and Jimmy; his daughter, Ginger Sistrunk; his brothers, Jackie and Billy; his sisters, Ruby Copeland and Linda Krietz; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Several weeks after the killings, Mr. Burrage told The Times that F.B.I. agents had been “right nice” to him. He added, “I want people to know I’m sorry it happened.”
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