NPR Podcast Reveals Details In Civil Rights-Era Minister's Murder

BOSTON — The murder of a Boston minister more than 50 years ago garnered national attention and prompted the outlaw of Jim Crow voting practices during the Civil Rights era. But the murder of James Reeb itself was never solved. Today, after a four-year investigation by NPR, the radio station unveiled new evidence it uncovered in a podcast.

Chip Brantley and Andrew Beck Grace the creators of the "White Lies" podcast that took a deep dive into the story, uncovered the identity of an attacker who admitted his involvement in the case.

Brantley told Patch that he and his co-creator both grew up in Alabama a generation after the Civil Rights Movement, but first heard about Reeb's murder from a civil rights reporter about four years ago.

"Neither of us had heard about it growing up, or in school," said Brantley. "As we started looking into it, we realized it was one of the few high profile civil rights murders, the ones that percolated out into the American consciousness, that was unsolved."

Reeb was a 38-year-old white Unitarian-Universalist minister who lived and worked in Boston’s black neighborhoods and was passionate about social justice. He had been on the staff of the American Friends Service Committee, aiding low-income families in Boston, when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. invited clergy to Selma after Bloody Sunday. Reeb headed to Alabama, despite warnings of how dangerous it could be for him.

Shortly after Reeb arrived, he and two other ministers were attacked by a group of at least white men. Three men were put on trial, but the all-white jury acquitted the men and that was that. Then, in 2011 FBI reopened the case.

In 2015, Brantley and Beck Grace started looking into the story, and quickly found that an elaborate lie had been created to absolve the accused, and Selma itself, of Reeb’s murder, said Brantley. They saw a chance to undo this narrative, and felt a sense of responsibility as white southerners to do just that, he told Patch.

And it was not without its complications.

“The story in White Lies tells us so much about who we have been and who we are," said Brantley. "It’s hard to hear these story of Jim Reeb’s murder and think, ‘oh, that was just those horrible people over there, back then.’ Those people are still a lot of us now.”

Here's the podcast intro:

Read more on NPR:

• Visual Narrative: The Murder Of James Reeb And Its Aftermath
• NPR identifies fourth attacker in Civil Rights Cold Case

And check out the rest of the story as told in NPR's podcast "White Lies"

-Patch staff Michael Steale contributed to this report.