Herbert Lee - was killed in broad daylight by state legislator E. H. Hurst in Liberty, Mississippi On September 25, 1961. Lee was a farmer who worked with voting rights activist Robert Parris Moses to help register Black voters.
In majority-Black Amite County, only one Black person was registered to vote. It was the most Klan-ridden county in the state, and only a handful of people were willing to participate in the effort to gain voting rights. Nonetheless, as a few people began trickling into voting school Moses organized in the tiny church on Steptoe’s property, an alarmed white community began threatening reprisal and violence.
Herbert Lee was one of the first victims. On September 25th, 1961, Lee arrived at the Westbrook cotton gin outside the town of Liberty with a full load of cotton in his truck. There he was confronted by E. H. Hurst, a member of the Mississippi state legislature. Hurst and Lee, who had been boyhood friends, had been arguing over Lee’s involvement with SNCC. Hurst called him over, and in front of more than a dozen witnesses, Hurst shot Lee in the head, killing him.
Hurst claimed self-defense and was acquitted by a coroner’s jury the same day as the killing.

Did You Know?

Louis Allen, who witnessed the shooting, was murdered two years later. “Murder Mystery: Shining a Light on the Story that the Newspapers Left Out” is a lesson that brings this story to the classroom.