Ben Chester White

Ben Chester White (January 5, 1899 – June 10, 1966) was an African-American caretaker, uninvolved in the civil rights movement, murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. This was likely in an attempt to move focus away from James Meredith’s March Against Fear or to lure Martin Luther King, Jr. in an assassination attempt. This murder went unnoticed by King.

Biography

Early life For his whole life, Ben Chester White was a caretaker to the Carter family farm on Liberty Road in Natchez, Mississippi, as well as a deacon in the local Baptist church. After buying Ben Chester White a soda, the three men took him into the Homochitto National Forest, ostensibly to help them find a lost dog, where he was shot eighteen times, dumped into Pretty Creek; the murderers burned the car in a planter's driveway across the county. Jones would be the one to soon after confess to the crime. Fuller and Jones were indicted but never tried, and Avants was acquitted (White's family later won a financial judgment that was never paid).

In 1968, Jesse White sued the KKK for his father's death and was awarded $1 million from the court. This was the first time in history the organization was legally held responsible for one of its members. The $1 million was never received.

Footage about White was shown in a 2013 episode of the documentary Civil Rights Movement Road Trip.

Avans was also implicated in the 1965 murder of Earl Hodges, a disillusioned former Klansman who had disavowed the group and whom colleagues feared was going to tell the police about their crimes.