State: Cry for justice finally heard

Cry for justice finally heard

A mother of 10 slain in Jacksonville in 1964 joins those honored at the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala.

By ADAM C. SMITH

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Jacksonville was in flames, engulfed in race riots, when a weary mother of 10 set off in search of her lost wallet 36 years ago.

Four young men, disgusted by the African-American demonstrators in downtown Jacksonville, decided to act. "Let's get a n-----," one of them suggested, and they drove toward northwest Jacksonville.

Johnnie Mae Chappell, a black woman who cleaned the homes of white people, was thinking about more than the civil unrest spreading through Jacksonville that evening in March 1964. When the dark blue Plymouth approached, she was preoccupied with hunting for her wallet on the side of New King's Road.

Then a gunshot cracked in the night, and a stunned Mrs. Chappell uttered her last known words: "I've been shot."

Johnnie Mae Chappell, a mother and wife of a 15-hour-a-day cement finisher and gas station attendant, became a quickly forgotten casualty in the fight for civil rights in Jacksonville.

Few know her name today, despite an obsessive, decades-long quest by her youngest child and a former detective to show America that Johnnie Mae Chappell mattered.

On Saturday, they finally succeeded.

About 80 of Mrs. Chappell's relatives gathered in Montgomery, Ala., as one of the nation's foremost civil rights groups rededicated its Civil Rights Memorial in Mrs. Chappell's honor. She is the first Floridian to join the likes of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the children killed in the Birmingham church bombing on the official list of people slain in the fight for civil rights.

"We now know that Johnnie Mae Chappell was a martyr in our nation's struggle for civil rights," President Clinton declared in a letter read during the emotional ceremony.

The ceremony ended with more than 150 people, many in tears, singing We Shall Overcome. Clutching hands in the back of the crowd were Lee Cody, 70, the white detective who solved the murder and lost his job complaining of a coverup, and Shelton Chappell, who was 4 months old when his mother died.

The two met only four years ago, but for more than 30 years they separately shared a tortured fixation with finding justice, or at least recognition for a mother killed because she was black.

"It's been a lifelong journey, and we're finally getting the recognition we wanted. My mother didn't just die on the side of a road as a nobody," said Shelton Chappell, who grew up bouncing between foster homes.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, best known for its successful legal battles putting violent hate groups out of business, commissioned the memorial in 1988. It stands in front of the SPLC office, a few blocks from the first White House of the Confederacy and from the church where King preached.

Water trickles over a black granite wall engraved with King's biblical paraphrase: "We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Nearby, water also gently flows over a granite disc engraved with names of 40 individuals killed between 1954, when the Supreme Court outlawed school segregation, and 1968, when King was assassinated.

The SPLC spent months researching whom to include on the memorial, contacting civil rights groups and digging through archives. They found the famous and the obscure, but never turned up Johnnie Mae Chappell. Knowing other martyrs must be out there, designer Maya Lin (who also designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.) left a symbolic small open space among the chronologically listed victims.

In April, the SPLC saw a St. Petersburg Times article about Johnnie Mae Chappell, and realized she belonged on its memorial.

"This is the first person that's been brought to our attention," said Joe Levin, president of the SPLC. "Rededicating the memorial was the right thing to do."

Taylor Branch, a Pulitzer Prize-winning authority on the civil rights movement, said there is no telling how many other Johnnie Mae Chappells were never recognized as victims in the civil rights struggle. He regularly hears unverified reports of people killed during the movement, and says the Civil Rights Memorial surely includes only a partial list of victims.

"I am absolutely certain there are more," he said in a phone interview. "There are people who didn't make the newspapers and maybe not the death records. For people who have worked in this field, it humbles you because you find out how much fear there was, to the point people were afraid even to report what happened."

For now, Mrs. Chappell's name will be added only to the pamphlets and official list of civil rights martyrs, which are distributed to the tens of thousands who visit the each year. But Levin said he expects the memorial will be refurbished within the next decade, and her name will be engraved then.

For Shelton Chappell and Lee Cody, this has been a long time coming.

Cody and his partner, Donald Coleman, almost by accident caught the four men involved in the murder. An all-white jury convicted J.W. Rich of manslaughter, rather than murder, and he spent three years in prison. Prosecutors dropped all charges against the other three.

Cody and Coleman lost their jobs, in large part because they attempted to expose the sheriff's department for trying to bury the case. Cody has spent much of his life futilely asking local, state and federal authorities to investigate his evidence of a coverup. He thought about all those officials Saturday.

"I was thinking about justice," Cody said. "I was thinking, to all the sheriffs and governors, and state attorneys, attorneys general and public officials, now does Johnnie Mae Chappell mean anything to them?"

Shelton Chappell, a Miami electrician, has been equally tortured. After his mother's death, state authorities decided his father, Willie Chappell, could not handle all the children. They were spread out among relatives and foster homes.

Since the age of 5, Shelton Chappell has been questioning what happened to his mother and why his family was ripped apart. Most of his siblings never knew the truth about who killed her and what happened to the killers.

Four years ago, Chappell took leave from work to search for answers in Jacksonville. Eventually, he and Cody met and the two of them continued trying to push for recognition and action.

A federal civil rights lawsuit against Jacksonville may prod the city to finally recognize Johnnie Mae Chappell. A spokeswoman for Jacksonville Mayor John Delaney said the city is looking at creating a memorial or exhibition about Mrs. Chappell.

A representative from the Florida Governor's Office attended the ceremony Saturday, bringing a proclamation from Gov. Jeb Bush. In it, Bush calls Johnnie Mae Chappell, "a daughter of Florida, whose memory we shall always and henceforth remember and honor."

Outside the SPLC office and away from the crowd honoring his mother, Shelton Chappell ran his hands over the engraved names of martyrs his mother now joins. He said a quiet prayer with tears running down his cheeks.

"This is my mother's spot. This is for her," he said.