The murder of Ben Chester White
Natchez, Adams County, Mississippi · 1966
Overview
Ben Chester White, a 67-year-old Black Baptist deacon who had worked all his life on a white family's farm outside Natchez, Mississippi, was killed on June 10, 1966, in the Homochitto National Forest in Adams County. Three men tied to the Ku Klux Klan, Claude Fuller, James Jones and Ernest Avants, had asked him to help find a lost dog. The Justice Department later said the plan was to lure Martin Luther King Jr. to the area by killing a Black man. Jones named all three in statements to state officers. Avants was acquitted at a state trial in December 1967, Jones's trial ended in a hung jury, and Fuller was never tried. Federal officials considered a civil rights charge in 1970 and did not bring one. In 1999 a national news program gave them a videotape of a recent interview with Avants, and they realized the killing had happened on federal land. Avants was indicted in June 2000 for aiding and abetting murder on federal property. Jones and Fuller were dead by then. In February 2003 a federal jury in Jackson convicted him, on Jones's 1966 testimony read aloud and on the account of an FBI agent to whom Avants had said in 1967 that he shot White. He was sentenced to life, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed in April 2004. Avants died in prison in 2004.
How it was solved
No new forensic test solved this case. A change of jurisdiction did. In 1966 the state of Mississippi charged Claude Fuller, James Jones and Ernest Avants after Jones, in custody, named all three. At Avants's state trial in December 1967 he was acquitted, Jones's trial ended in a hung jury and Fuller was never tried. The government told the Fifth Circuit that the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division weighed a federal civil rights charge in 1970, noted that the limitations period would expire in 11 months, and did not indict. According to the government, the case came back to its attention in 1999, when a national news program provided a videotape of a recent interview with Avants. FRONTLINE identifies the program as ABC's 20/20. Federal officials then saw that White had been killed in a national forest, which gave them a basis for a federal murder charge. The Justice Department opened an investigation that year, and a federal grand jury indicted Avants in June 2000. The case then turned on a 1967 admission. FBI agents who had visited Avants about a different killing reported that he said he had shot White with a shotgun. A district court excluded the statement, and in January 2002 the Fifth Circuit reversed, holding that the federal and state prosecutions were separate offenses. At the February 2003 trial, Jones and Fuller were dead, as was the doctor who had performed the autopsy. Prosecutors read Jones's 1966 testimony and statement to the jury, read the autopsy doctor's earlier testimony, and called a pathologist and one of the two FBI agents. The jury convicted Avants on February 28, 2003. The Fifth Circuit affirmed in 2004.
Sources
- United States v. Avants, No. 03-60526 (5th Cir. April 19, 2004)
“According to the Government, the case was brought to its attention in 1999, when a national news program provided a videotape of a recent interview with Avants.”
- United States v. Avants, No. 00-60745 (5th Cir. January 7, 2002)
“We hold that the federal and state murder prosecutions in this case, although identical in their respective elements, are separate offenses for purposes of the Sixth Amendment because they were violations of the laws of two separate sovereigns”
- Defendant convicted for role in 1967 Mississippi civil rights-era murder (February 28, 2003)
“The Justice Department opened an investigation into the death of White in 1999, using a federal statute that prohibits murder on federal property.”
- The Department of Justice's Efforts to Investigate and Prosecute Unsolved Civil Rights Era Homicides
“In 2003, he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.”
- Ben Chester White, Un(re)solved
“In 1999 journalist Connie Chung investigated White’s murder for ABC’s 20/20, drawing fresh attention to the decades-old case.”
- 2003: Ernest Avants convicted of murder (February 28, 2025, by Jerry Mitchell)
“A U.S. District Court jury in Jackson, Mississippi, convicted Ernest Avants of murder — the first federal murder charges connected to the pursuit of unpunished killings from the civil rights era.”
- Ernest Avants (October 27, 2022)
“Decades later, it was reported that the killing of White had been committed on federal property.”
- Ben Chester White, Cloud of Witnesses
“This time, at age 72, Avants is convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.”
- Mississippi Martyrs
“He was murdered by Klansmen who thought they could divert attention from a civil rights march by killing a black person.”
- Ben Chester White (1899-1966)
“was not a civil rights worker; he was not even registered to vote.”