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On Monday evening, I got a call from my friend Jesse who had been down at Occupy Boston earlier in the day. Mayor Menino and Boston Police were telling the protestors that they could not stay at the second camp they’d started a block away from the original Dewy Square site, on the Rose Kennedy Greenway; the protestors had till midnight to leave the second site at Atlantic Avenue and Pearl Street or they’d be forcibly removed and arrested. Jesse asked me if I’d go there with him to be unofficial observers and document the goings on should the police take action against the protestors. I’d been wanting to visit Occupy Boston to learn more about it firsthand, and this seemed important to do, so I said yes.

Jesse shot stills with his SLR, and though I brought one, too, I focused on posting in real time via Instagram and Justin.tv. But before I highlight any of that material, I want to direct you to this great 10 minute documentary about Monday night, by Michael Gill.

Gill captured many moments that I also witnessed and shows what it was like there very well. My iPhone video streams are much lower quality and, of course, unedited, but at various times I was broadcasting live to over 3000 viewers, after the police had made most official media leave the scene, so they served a function. One thing not shown in Gill’s film was how, after the camp was cleared of protestors, police and sanitation workers disposed of all items remaining—tents, sleeping bags, bedrolls, signs, chairs, supplies—in two sanitation trucks. Here’s some footage:

Watch live video from minorjive on Justin.tv

Here’s a small slideshow of scenes I captured with the the camer on my phone.

More information about night of October 10 and early morning hours of October 11 at Occupy Boston:

• Boston police move in on protesters on Greenway, scores arrested (Boston Globe)
• BPD Arrest Protesters From ‘Occupy Boston’ (WBUR)
• Mayor Menino Responds To Occupy Boston Arrests (WBUR)
• Statement from the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy (PDF)
• October 10, 2011: We Will Occupy (Occupy Boston)
• Mass Arrests of Occupy Boston Protestors (Occupy Boston)
• Images from the Takedown (Occupy Boston)
• Boston Police Brutally Assault Occupy Boston (Occupy Boston)
• More on Occupy Boston Arrests (Occupy Boston)
• Occupier: What Happened to Me in the Police Raid and Arrest of 141 Peaceful Protestors (Occupy Boston)

I started this blog in 2004 to write about things like this photo of my father and James Baldwin in Birmingham, AL in 1963 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

James Baldwin and my father, Paul Greenberg, at the AG Gaston Motel, Birmingham, Alabama, August 4, 1963. (Photo credit: Robert Adamenko)

In time, however, blogging led to investigative journalism about unpunished lynchings and other violence from the civil rights era.

In the summer of 2007, I returned to Mississippi to look into violence that had taken place near Woodville in the southwest part of the state. After I interviewed an NAACP official, a black woman in her early 70′s who owned a shop in the town center stopped me on the street. “You a reporter?” she asked. Before long, she and her husband were sharing stories of violence against blacks in Woodville in the ’50′s and ’60′s. They asked if I had ever heard of Man Walker whose given first name was Clifford or Clifton. He was shot in his car on Poor House Road and they thought his children lived nearby in Louisiana.

Since I was on my way to Hattiesburg to do research in the McCain Archives at the University of Southern Mississippi, I couldn’t stick around to learn more. Yet at the archives, I found a number of Mississippi Highway and Safety Patrol reports on the Clifton Walker case. The reports were riveting. I had to investigate.

I’ve located a number of Walker’s family members and have been working closely with three of his children since 2008. One daughter, Catherine, has joined me in questioning those with possible involvement in her father’s murder. On one occasion there was a surprising moment of reconciliation between Catherine and a member of a white Woodville family. Walker’s murder had allegedly been planned at this family’s truck stop, and at the end of the interview with the elderly business owner and his daughter, Walker and the other daughter hugged. Catherine had not expected to meet whites from Woodville willing to talk about the murder. This small but significant step toward the closure that she and her siblings need gave us a taste of what might be possible for her family and for this small backwoods Mississippi community that is still largely committed to silence and to protecting murderers.

I tell this story in the Fall 2011 issue of Nieman Reports, which is devoted to cold case reporting. The issue also includes stories by my colleagues from the Civil Rights Cold Case Project:

• David Ridgen, It Takes a Hard-Driving Team to Uncover the Truth of a Cold Case, The Bonds of Our Reporting: The Civil Rights Cold Case Project
• John Flemming, Compelled to Remember What Others Want to Forget
• Jerry Mitchell, The Case of the Supposedly Sealed Files—And What They Revealed
• Stanley Nelson, Who Killed Frank Morris?
• Hank Klibanoff, Here’s What People Want to Know: Why Do Journalists Tell These Stories?
• Robert J. Rosenthal, The Enduring Ambition of the Civil Rights Cold Case Project
• Paul C. Johnson and Janice L. McDonald, When Lawyers and Journalists Share Common Cause

The issue also includes stories by Simeon Booker, Bill Minor and Jan Gardner.

I’m honored to again be one of the photographers exhibiting photos of the HONK! Festival at the Inside/Out Gallery, in the windows outside the Davis Square CVS in Somerville, MA. The photos are on display now through the first weekend in October when the 6th Annual HONK! Festival of activist street bands comes to Somerville and Cambridge. Below are three of the photos I have on display, along with photos by Jesse Edsel-Vetter, Greg Cook, Chirs Yeager and Mike Dannenhauer. Stop by and see our photos, if you come through Davis Square. Visit honkfest.org for a full schedule of events and more information about the festival and bands.

Rude Mechanical Orchestra at HONK! 2010 in Davis Sqaure (Ben Greenberg)

DJA-Rara at HONK! 2010 in Harvard Square (Ben Greenberg)

Extraordinary Rendition Band at HONK! 2010 in the Somerville Theatre (Ben Greenberg)

New York Times reporter Shaila Dewan blogged yesterday that the Justice Department has declined to reopen the Malcolm X murder case.

“Although the Justice Department recognizes that the murder of Malcolm X was a tragedy, both for his family and for the community he served, we have determined that at this time, the matter does not implicate federal interests sufficient to necessitate the use of scarce federal investigative resources into a matter for which there can be no federal criminal prosecution,” the department said.

This was follow up to her reporting in the Times on new attention to the Malcolm X case and new calls to investigate on the heels of the late Manning Marable’s recent biography of Malcolm X and in light of the successful prosecutions of  decades old civil rights murder cases in the South.

I’ll explain why I think the funding issue is a bit of red herring in a minute. The more important question, which Dewan raises, is why isn’t the Justice Department taking up the murder of Malcolm X under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act of 2008? “The department, without elaborating, said the crime did not fit the parameters of that act,” Dewan reports.

If the Till Act is applied to the Malcolm X case, jurisdiction and funding would not be concerns. A House Judiciary Committee report (PDF) found that though federal prosecution may not be possible in many of the civil rights era crimes addressed by the Act,

Concurrent federal jurisdiction is necessary only to permit joint state-federal investigations and to authorize federal prosecution in those instances in which state and local officials are either unable or unwilling to pursue cases that adequately address the federal interest in fighting bias crime.

This Committee nevertheless expects the federal government to still play a vital role in these prosecutions. First, in terms of investigations, in 2006 the FBI began a comprehensive effort to identify and investigate racially-motivated murders committed during the 1950s and 1960s. The FBI has already started to accumulate information from outside organizations and to follow those leads. We expect this initiative to continue and to expand….

in terms of resources, the federal government has the resources and expertise to provide valuable assistance to state and local entities pursuing state prosecutions. In the Emmett Till case, although no federal jurisdiction was present, the Department conducted an investigation into a local matter because Till had traveled from out-of-state into the state in which he was murdered. The FBI reported the results of its extensive investigation to the District Attorney for Greenville, Mississippi. We expect such cooperation and assistance to continue and to expand into other scenarios. While maintaining the primary role of state and local governments in the investigation and prosecution of violent hate crimes, the bill would authorize the federal government to work in partnership with state and local law enforcement officials and to serve an important backstop function with regard to a wider range of hate-motivated violence than federal law currently permits. (Emphasis added)

Furthermore, FBI spokesperson Christopher Allen has insisted to me in an email that “No case” taken up under the Till Act or the FBI Cold Case Initiative “has suffered as a result of lack of funding.”

So if under the Till Act, the FBI is mandated to assist in investigations even where there is no federal jurisdiction, and there is no funding obstacle to federal involvement, then the real question is why won’t the Department of Justice consider the Malcolm X murder under the Till Act?

For one, it is not clear if the killing could be considered a civil rights crime because both the perpetrators and the victims are black.

[Historian David] Garrow said the definition of a civil rights crime should not be too narrow. “When a major civil rights leader is assassinated, I’d like the civil rights division to be interested, regardless of the color of the gunman,” he said, referring to the federal unit.

Some experts say the Justice Department’s participation is crucial because the F.B.I. and the New York Police Department had Malcolm X under surveillance at the time of his death, raising questions about whether law enforcement officials had knowledge beforehand of the assassination plot.

It would be a shame if the color of the gunmen became a convenient cover for not examining possible failures of law enforcement to stop a crime officials may have had foreknowledge of; it would also be a shame if avoiding a full investigation allowed a known, alleged perpetrator who currently lives free to evade prosecution.

Here also are two of the thornier obstacles to resolving any number of civil rights era cold cases: black involvement in and government responsibility—direct or indirect—for the crimes. Though the approach to these issues in southern cases has largely been inadequate, it may yet be more palatable to many to consider involvement of blacks who were more widely subject  to subtle and overt forms of coercion in the South and to call up stereotypes of racist southern law enforcement and lawmakers who participated in and/or fomented and supported Klan violence.

The Till Act is meant to address the very problem that most of the cases it covers were never fully investigated at the time they occurred.

David Garrow, a historian and a King biographer, obtained and reviewed the Federal Bureau of Investigation files on Malcolm X in the 1990s. He said it was probable that reams of wiretaps of the Nation of Islam had never been combed for clues. In 1980, the bureau said it had never investigated the assassination.

Without a full investigation, justice will not be done and the truth cannot be known.

(Cross-posted on Colorlines.)