After many decades, evidence is surfacing of Isadore Banks’ vast properties! Cooper reports that “The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University’s School of Law has been investigating Banks’ case for over a year and has just made a remarkable discovery; The Project has found records proving what Banks’ family has known for 57 years.
“It appears he owned quite a bit of land at the time of his death,” said Margaret Burnham, Director of the Project. She explained the records were unearthed in various county court houses in Arkansas and in state records offices.
The Project, which also represents Banks’ descendants, now must undergo the arduous process of tracing the land to its current owners and perhaps filing suits seeking transfer of the land back to Banks’ family.”
In June 1954, Isadore Banks, an African-American veteran of World War I, was chained to a tree, doused in gasoline, and burned alive beyond recognition. Now the traditional three-shot volley salute and the solemn sound of taps echoed across the black cemetery in the Delta flatlands of Arkansas, just across the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tennessee, in his honour. Banks’ slaying, a year before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to whites on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, remains one of the nation’s oldest unsolved civil rights cases.
A pillar in the African-American community, Isadore Banks helped bring electricity to the town of Marion in the 1920s and became one of the wealthiest black landowners in a region with a long history of racial violence. His killing had a profound effect. Many blacks left and never came back. For those who remained, the message was clear: If you were black and acquired wealth, you knew your place.
The odd part is that Banks’ case has not even been through a preliminary cold case re-investigation. You can read about preliminary cold case re-investigations here. More about Isadore Banks here.