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I'm Jeff Asher, and this is the Jeffalytics Podcast.
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Sometimes the hardest part about a crime isn't figuring out what happened.
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It's revisiting what's already been decided.
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Once a case is closed and a conclusion settles in, changing that can be just as difficult as investigating it was in the first place.
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My guest today is Jill Cullen Jefferson, a civil and human rights attorney and the founder of Julian, an organization focused on investigating modern-day lynchings and working with families and communities seeking answers in cases that have often gone unresolved or unquestioned.
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In this episode, we talk about how she approaches that work, how these cases reach her in the first place, and what it takes to re-examine investigations that others have already moved on from.
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We also get into the realities of doing this work in the field, the challenges of working across different jurisdictions, and the tension that can come with taking a closer look at cases that were never meant to be reopened.
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If you're looking for a conversation about what it takes to keep pushing when the answers aren't as settled as they might seem, this is it.
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My guest today is Jill Cullen Jefferson.
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Jill, thanks so much for joining.
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Thank you so much for having me, Jeff.
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So walk me through what is your background?
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What brought you here to us today?
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Well, I am a civil and human rights attorney.
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My background, I grew up in the sticks of Mississippi.
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Went to an undergrad, I met Julian Bond, who became my mentor and taught me everything I know about civil rights and human rights.
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He took me under his wing and he became my mentor.
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Years later, when I was in law school, I went to Harvard and I was working in the innovation lab to put together a civil rights organization that was unlike any other that existed.
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And I thought, what should I name this thing?
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And so I named it Julian after him.
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And founded Julian in 2020.
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We are the only organization in the country that has a focus on modern-day lynchings.
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Our mission is to end caste systems in America.
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And I think we've I think we've done some good work in getting to where we need to go and achieving our vision.
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And sort of what what motivates you to do all of this work?
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So it's my purpose on this earth.
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And I know that sounds weird, but like um when I was an undergrad, Professor Bond took me aside and he said, you know, your purpose in life is to be a disciple of civil rights because you understand it better than your peers.
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So you have a responsibility to teach them.
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And I really took that to heart, and it wasn't just him saying it, I fell in love with civil rights, like the history of it, the movement.
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I just I love it.
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I'm in love with it.
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And I had started to investigate civil rights cold cases from the 1960s, like during the civil rights era, people who had been lynched during that time.
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And at one of those conferences about historical lynchings, somebody said, somebody here got lynched two weeks ago and nobody's talking about that.
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And I said, Oh my gosh.
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And so at that point, my focus became focusing on modern-day lynchings and getting attention to those and solving those cases.
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I want to ask a very broad question that sort of comes from my personal experience.
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My dad grew up in Bogaloosa, Louisiana, which I guess would be the sticks of Louisiana.
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Um, are you familiar with Bogaloosa?
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I am, yes.
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All right.
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I haven't been there.
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I think he took me there when I was two.
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Um, was the most recent I've been there, and I know it's changed a lot since then.
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But he would tell me stories of my grandfather and my great uncle, like as one of like six Jewish families in town, they were targeted by the Klan.
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Um, and he would tell me stories about them uh staying up, like sleeping by the door with a rifle and like just ready to for anything that might happen from the clan.
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And my my very broad question is having been involved in this work, uh, how do you think through like communicating all of this, all of this struggle, everything that happened in the the um during the civil rights movement to a generation that maybe doesn't have those firsthand uh stories to live by?
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Yeah.
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So we talk about the evolution of lynching.
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We talk about what it was before and what it is now in terms of, you know, before it would be um mob violence, and people would take souvenirs, like they would cut off body parts as souvenirs and things like that, and take photographs and and share those photographs around like baseball cards.
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And a lot of those photographs still exist to this day, and you can go online and see them.
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We talk about that and we talk about the transition to lynchings being more underground.
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The fact that lynchings now happen through not mob violence, but a couple of people who get together and they're usually radicalized online and they get together and they carry out this act, there's still the aspect of spectacle to it, like there was in the civil rights era.
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But now lynchings, they're they're carried out by small groups, but they're also in some in some instances carried out by police.
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I would call what happened to George Floyd a lynching.
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How would you sort of define?
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Do you have a definition of lynching in the modern sense?
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Or is that something that just sort of you look at a case and you you can kind of feel it?
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Yeah, a lynching is an extrajudicial killing.
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A modern-day lynching, to be to be clear, isn't is a discriminatory killing committed in the late 20th or early 21st century by more than one person carried out for an alleged offense with or without a legal trial or due process?
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And our definition of lynching expands the definition to include cases that are like LGBTQ PLUS and Indigenous women and things like that that haven't historically been included in the definition of lynching.
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So, what what is your sort of investigative process when you're looking at a case?
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Are these the type of things that someone brings brings potential cases to you?
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Do you have research that that looks into these things and finds them first?
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Is there a like first thing that comes to mind that makes you want to investigate a certain case further?
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The first thing that comes to mind is always, is it a lynching or was it a suicide or something else?
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And figuring that piece out.
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These cases come to us in different ways.
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Sometimes people call us and ask us to get on a case.
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In one case, a police officer came to my mother's house and asked me to look into the case.
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In other cases, family members will contact us.
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And in some instances, we find the case on our own and we contact them and see if they would like assistance.
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And so the investigative process, it really looks like after we get the case, the first step is to talk to family and friends.
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A lot of times, family and friends have gotten leads or have ideas of maybe what happened to someone that I that's really helpful to kickstart an investigation.
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The next step is to get all the paper you can possibly get, if there are court documents, if there are police documents, to get all the paper and examine it.
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And then after that, it's a matter of following the individual leads and seeing where they take you, making sure that you don't miss any gaps, making sure that you fill the gaps that the police may have missed and things like that.
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And how does the process, the investigative process, work from there?
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Once we have basically figured out what happened, we then take our information to authorities, whether it be the FBI or the State Bureau of Investigation or local authorities.
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Usually local authorities are not willing to do anything because they're the ones who botched it in the first place.
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And they don't want, they're more concerned about their image than they are about justice, is what I've found.
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And so by any means, we take these facts and everything that we learn to them and we give them all the evidence and when that we urge them to take action to charge the people criminally with murder and with lynching.
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And so in these instances, we haven't, we've gotten some cases reopened, but the local DAs and the local police have been in the way of actually getting new charges filed.
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So is there a sort of a communication pattern that you tend to sort of operate within when you get this information?
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I'm sure you frequently law enforcement is certainly skeptical, I'm I imagine.
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The public might be skeptical.
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You sort of have to overcome a level of skepticism.
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How do you go about sort of overcoming that?
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And what role does just communicating what you're finding play into that?
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Yeah, so it's never as easy as just communicating what we found.
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With every single modern-day lynching case, we have to overcome a suicide designation first.
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The coroner, the crime lab, the police rule it a suicide, and you have to prove that it's not before they will actually, you know, listen to you and what your theory is.
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So you have to disprove theirs.
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And so that's always an uphill battle.
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You have to show the gaps that they've they had in their investigation, the people they didn't talk to.
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You have to present the evidence to them that they missed, essentially, and show them, hey, if you had gotten this right, then you would have seen this different outcome.
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But yeah, we in every case, we have to overcome the designation of suicide first.
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And that's always hard.
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If it's under the jurisdiction of the FBI and you have a good president and administration in, then they can be very helpful in getting things moved and getting states to give traction to things to investigations, but we don't have that right now.
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And so it's basically just down to us to prove the cases on our own and with the evidence that we have and hope that the local authorities will listen.
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What has your experience been with that?
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Is it sort of hit or miss based on the jurisdiction and the police department or or sheriff's office and coroner, or is it certain states or cities that do better that you've come across, or is it just sort of random scattering of you get lucky sometimes?
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Um, I have found that it's always an uphill battle.
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I have not come across a situation where it just happened like in terms of like routine.
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It's always been having to, like I said, disprove and then prove.
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And when you're talking to these DAs, the thing you have to realize is that they work with these police every day.
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And their motivation a lot of times is to protect the people they work with, to protect the police, not really to get justice in the case.
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And so I found in pretty much every instance that we have to go head to head with the DAs in order to get them to seek justice on behalf of these families.
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Can you walk me through any like success stories in terms of your work and taking a case and overcoming all of those hurdles and reaching a conclusion where at least sort of the truth of the case is at least acknowledged?
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The Willie Andrew Jones Jr.
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case is one that I reference often in terms of a victory, even though the DA hasn't completely come around yet.
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Um, we have gotten the case reopened by the Miss City Bureau of Investigation to just set the facts of that case.
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Willie was a 21-year-old black man who was found hanging from a tree in his white girlfriend's front yard in 2018.
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Authorities ruled it a suicide.
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Within 40 minutes of Willie's mother being on the scene, they told her it was a suicide.
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They had not interviewed any witnesses.
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They had not canvassed the crime scene.
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They had not roped off the crime scene.
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They basically had not investigated at all.
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Yet they they came up with this determination.
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We came in, we found a ton of gaps.
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We found witnesses that they had not spoken with, people who heard Willie fighting for his life.
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We put all of that evidence forward to the DA, and the DA still didn't budge.
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We got help from the FBI and in the state U.S.
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attorney's office to put pressure on the local DA and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.
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And so the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation reopened the case and put pressure on the DA and got the DA to say, you know, if I I am willing to to prosecute this, if the evidence is there, but of course the evidence has been there all along.
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And so we we've gotten the case reopened, but we still haven't gotten a favorable ruling.
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And it's been what, eight years from that for that case?
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Yes.
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It takes a lot of time.
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The investigation itself doesn't have to take that long, but usually um when you're dealing with getting other authorities to move or to change their, to change their minds on something, they dig their heels and they it is it is hard to get things reversed.
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Uh sort of on the opposite end, has there been cases where you felt, like at least initially, that there was strong evidence to support your work, to support an investigation, and then the evidence just sort of didn't pan out and despite initial suspicions and and sort of how how do you handle situations like that?
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There have been situations where we thought potentially it was a lynching, and then through investigation we found that it was a suicide instead.
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In those instances, what we do is we we always work closely with the families.
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We don't reveal the identities of the people whose investigations we came out with as suicides, or we work closely with the families to make sure that they get some level of closure.
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In some of these cases, they might disagree, you know, but after we show them the evidence, they tend to, they tend to be more on board.
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But in those instances, is a very, it's a very delicate balance.
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You have to be very aware of their feelings and and the situation.
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Um, and you also have to just really be aware of your own investigation to make sure that you didn't miss anything.
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Like the police missed things in the first place.
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And so, yeah, it takes it takes a lot.
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It's a delicate balance when you find out that it wasn't a lynching.
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You a lot of times have families who have been believing the opposite for years.
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And so it's a matter of of of helping them come to terms with what actually happened.
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Have there been any cases where you were sort of, I mean, you're probably uncomfortable with many of the findings, but sort of uncomfortable or unexpected conclusions that sort of complicate everything for you and and have been sort of difficult to wrap your head around?
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And sort of like, I'm just curious, how do you handle like real, like strong complexity and uncertainty?
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Because that's something that at least in in the crime data world we deal with all the time.
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And how do you how do you express perceptions or express trends where the data's really the information's really uncertain?
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In terms of how we investigate, we investigate until we are certain about something.
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Um, we feel like there's more to find.
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Um, if we're uncertain that there are more people to talk to, more perspectives that we haven't gotten that we need to get.
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Right now, in in one of our open investigations, there is uncertainty about what the cause of death was.
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And that to me just means that we haven't talked to enough people or investigated deeply enough or gotten enough, enough evidence.
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There have been some situations where like the autopsy will say something and witnesses will say something different.
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And that situation is one where you have to really figure out what happened because obviously the independent autopsy, especially, is is is going to be clear about what happened.
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Maybe not the first one by the state.
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But in those instances, you really just keep digging deeper and you talk to additional pathologists to get their perspective and you go back over your notes.
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You know, in terms of like these investigations, I haven't gotten to one yet where I couldn't find for certain what happened to someone, whether it was a suicide, whether it was an accident, or whether it was a lynching.
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And so that hasn't come up as much.
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It just so far, it just means that we need to keep looking.
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But I haven't gotten to a case where at the end of the case, we're still uncertain.
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Do you have any idea how law enforcement perceives you?
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Are there just sort of law enforcement and criminal justice system actors, I guess?
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Are there DAs and sheriffs and police officers that sort of respect your approach but don't necessarily agree with the findings?
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Um, or do you feel feel that there's sort of a contentious relationship pretty much always?
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With the exception of one case, it has been contentious every time.
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People do not like me.
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The authorities don't like somebody coming in and looking at gaps in their work.
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They don't like being exposed for having missed things.
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No.
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And then this work happens in the deep south.
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And I am not naive enough to think that who I am doesn't play a role into it.
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I'm a black woman doing this work.
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And I'm sure that that doesn't make it any easier for anybody to to like me or to get on board with what we're doing.
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And so, with the exception of one case, a case where the it was actually the police who asked us to investigate the case, it has been contentious the entire time.
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And how do you sort of handle that?
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How do you protect sources and continue investigating, knowing that you sort of have a contentious relationship out there somewhere?
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I have allies.
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I don't want to say who they are, but I have allies.
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Name all of your sources on this podcast, please.
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Our allies really do a lot in taking the heat off.
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They will sometimes they'll file things so that I don't have to, so that there isn't a focus on me.
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Sometimes they will have, they'll take meetings so that I don't have to take them and so my identity doesn't have to be involved.
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And so that is how we get around it, having good allies, honestly.
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Can I ask you about your sort of somewhat high-profile arrest in 2023?
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Sure.
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Is that is that okay?
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I mean, I don't want to I'm just curious, like how nobody's ever asked me if they could ask first.
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It feels polite, right?
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Like it is polite, yeah.
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So what one is uh can you sort of describe what happened?
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And two, I'm just curious how has your work or has your work at all changed since that offense or since that that incident, I should say?
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What happened was that Julian, my organization, had sued the Lexington Police Department.
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They had been just completely violating people's rights.
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There were Fourth Amendment violations, 14th Amendment violations, like they were targeting black people, they were using excessive force, they were retaliating against people for free speech.
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It was it was just ridiculousness.
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It was the worst police crisis this country had seen in 50 years.
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And so something that was happening was that this was before the DOJ got involved and before people were were paying attention to what was happening.
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I would go to Lexington and kind of patrol and police the police.
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Um, and so one night when I was doing this, I saw the police pulling somebody over like they were in the process of arresting someone, and I drove by and recorded it.
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I drove back by, and when I drove by the second time, they stopped me and asked me why I was recording them.
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And then proceeded to try to arrest me.
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Well, not try, they did arrest me.
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They told me to get out of the car, would not get out of the car.
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I asked them why they had stopped me because it wasn't a roadblock, you know.
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So why are you just stopping me in the Middle of the road and demanding to see my ID.
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From the perspective of like, like the legal perspective of a stop, things just were not right on their end.
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They things were just really off.
00:22:12.240 --> 00:22:16.960
And so I was not going to get out of the car and I was not going to just allow myself to be arrested.
00:22:17.200 --> 00:22:23.519
So they they pulled me out of the car, pushed me up against the side of the car and put my hands behind my back.
00:22:23.680 --> 00:22:37.599
And and and when they put me in the police car, the white officer who had arrested me, he shaped his hands into like the shape of a gun and acted like he was like putting it to my head and shooting me.
00:22:37.839 --> 00:22:43.920
So we got to the police station and he was really just um, he thought he was gonna intimidate me.
00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:47.839
He was telling me, you know, you're going, you're gonna go to jail tonight.
00:22:47.920 --> 00:22:50.240
And I was like, okay, let's go to jail.
00:22:50.559 --> 00:22:53.519
He ended up taking me to the jail.
00:22:53.680 --> 00:22:57.519
And I spent, I think it was three days in jail.
00:22:57.759 --> 00:23:00.720
But it was honestly a blessing in disguise.
00:23:00.880 --> 00:23:12.319
So we knew that the police had been harassing women and stopping women for the purpose of getting their phone numbers or asking them out on dates and things like that.
00:23:12.400 --> 00:23:18.960
And if the one, if the woman said no, the police would then figure out a way to arrest her, ticket her, or something like that.
00:23:19.119 --> 00:23:22.799
And so I had been trying to reach those women.
00:23:23.039 --> 00:23:26.480
And it came to find out, they ended up being my cellmates.
00:23:26.559 --> 00:23:29.680
Like I get in, I get in jail, and these women are my cellmates.
00:23:29.920 --> 00:23:33.759
The guards were able to get me some paper and a pen.
00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:39.039
I just wrote down their stories and wrote down their contact information for when I got out.
00:23:39.279 --> 00:23:45.680
And so um it ended up being something that was really helpful to our efforts, actually.
00:23:46.079 --> 00:24:05.599
And since then, you know, it's it's definitely set the tone in these cases to show how lawless these this department was, and how they tried to make a point to the community by arresting the leader of their of their local movement.
00:24:05.920 --> 00:24:13.680
They they wanted to send a message to the community that that they could not be stopped, that the police could not be stopped.
00:24:13.920 --> 00:24:17.039
And thankfully that did not go over well.
00:24:17.279 --> 00:24:19.039
Um, and the opposite was shown.
00:24:19.200 --> 00:24:28.720
What they were doing is still what stop was put to it, and justice was found, and at least a DOJ findings report for these victims.
00:24:29.039 --> 00:24:32.079
And how how has that impacted your work going forward?
00:24:32.480 --> 00:24:38.240
Well, now when somebody googles me, the first thing they see is that I was arrested.
00:24:38.480 --> 00:24:41.519
And so that was not the first thing.
00:24:42.960 --> 00:24:44.720
I I was I yeah, I read about it.
00:24:44.880 --> 00:24:47.519
I there was an interview you were giving, I think to the University of Virginia.
00:24:47.599 --> 00:24:49.599
I read about it, so that wasn't the first thing.
00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:56.160
Okay, it wasn't the first thing, but is there it's one of the most more prominent things there.
00:24:56.640 --> 00:25:03.279
I think it's you know thank you to you for continuing to read, but a lot of people don't keep reading.
00:25:03.519 --> 00:25:06.160
They they it's like, oh, she's been arrested.
00:25:06.799 --> 00:25:07.920
I don't want to work with her.
00:25:08.079 --> 00:25:10.160
Why would an attorney get arrested?
00:25:10.400 --> 00:25:19.759
And so I I haven't seen it be like, you know, a positive thing for for the work.
00:25:20.240 --> 00:25:22.240
Um, to be honest with you.
00:25:22.559 --> 00:25:28.799
It's been something that's been more like if people don't get past the headline and like read what actually happened.
00:25:29.119 --> 00:25:40.160
It's it's more like it it looks like incompetence on my end or that I was doing something wrong other rather than the police actually targeting me and arresting me.
00:25:40.400 --> 00:25:46.400
And that was something else that I I forgot to mention that we did find out that the police had targeted me.
00:25:46.559 --> 00:25:58.640
It was a if a former police officer told us that the police had been plotting to arrest me for some time, but they just couldn't figure out how and when um in the right circumstances.
00:25:58.880 --> 00:26:02.480
And so um everything came together that night for them.
00:26:03.039 --> 00:26:03.680
Yeah.
00:26:04.079 --> 00:26:05.920
Well, I I really appreciate you sharing.
00:26:06.160 --> 00:26:09.519
Um it's it's obviously such a unique and important perspective.
00:26:09.599 --> 00:26:11.039
So I really appreciate that.
00:26:11.279 --> 00:26:13.839
I want to sort of turn to the future.
00:26:14.000 --> 00:26:18.960
And I'm curious, do you have a vision for what the future of your work, for what your organization looks like?
00:26:19.119 --> 00:26:27.200
And this is a question I've started asking all of my guests that is there a role for AI specifically in this, or is that just not something that's on your radar?
00:26:27.519 --> 00:26:29.200
AI is on my radar.
00:26:29.440 --> 00:26:30.880
Yes, it is.
00:26:31.440 --> 00:26:42.240
We have to be careful with like the AI data centers and things like that to make sure they're not polluting communities that are already vulnerable.
00:26:42.400 --> 00:26:43.599
I will say that.
00:26:51.279 --> 00:26:56.400
It also just sometimes, like, you know, it can be helpful in brainstorming.
00:26:56.559 --> 00:26:59.920
And so AI does have, does have a place in Julian's future.
00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.880
And what I see our work being is that we're gonna end lynchings for real this time.
00:27:05.039 --> 00:27:07.200
We're going to end lynchings.
00:27:07.440 --> 00:27:11.519
We are going to eliminate systems of caste in America.
00:27:11.920 --> 00:27:26.480
But the biggest thing in that is making sure that these families and these communities are taken care of, making sure that what their vision for what they want and what their future, what they want their future to be, is what we uphold.
00:27:26.640 --> 00:27:36.480
And so I'll say I have a vision for Julian overall to end lynchings, and modern-day lynchings, and to eliminate caste.
00:27:36.799 --> 00:27:47.039
But when it comes down to like the individual details of that, that that depends on the communities that we work with and what they want and how we can help them get there.
00:27:47.279 --> 00:27:47.759
That's great.
00:27:47.920 --> 00:27:52.079
Well, it's certainly an inspiring story and an inspiring uh organization.
00:27:52.160 --> 00:27:54.240
So I really appreciate you coming on, Jill.
00:27:54.319 --> 00:27:56.640
Um, keep up the good work and I wish you luck.
00:27:56.880 --> 00:27:58.400
Thank you so much for having me, Jeff.
00:27:58.480 --> 00:27:59.759
I appreciate it.
00:28:00.960 --> 00:28:03.119
Thanks for listening to the Jeffalytics Podcast.
00:28:03.279 --> 00:28:09.599
Be sure to subscribe and to learn more, head on over to ahdatalytics.com for more information and previous episodes.
00:28:09.759 --> 00:28:14.079
If you like what you heard, please leave a glowing review, which will help others to discover the show.
00:28:14.240 --> 00:28:16.000
Until next time, I'm Jeff Asher.
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.279
I'm Jeff Asher, and this is the Jeffalytics Podcast.
00:00:04.400 --> 00:00:07.839
Sometimes the hardest part about a crime isn't figuring out what happened.
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It's revisiting what's already been decided.
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Once a case is closed and a conclusion settles in, changing that can be just as difficult as investigating it was in the first place.
00:00:16.960 --> 00:00:31.039
My guest today is Jill Cullen Jefferson, a civil and human rights attorney and the founder of Julian, an organization focused on investigating modern-day lynchings and working with families and communities seeking answers in cases that have often gone unresolved or unquestioned.
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In this episode, we talk about how she approaches that work, how these cases reach her in the first place, and what it takes to re-examine investigations that others have already moved on from.
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We also get into the realities of doing this work in the field, the challenges of working across different jurisdictions, and the tension that can come with taking a closer look at cases that were never meant to be reopened.
00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:57.759
If you're looking for a conversation about what it takes to keep pushing when the answers aren't as settled as they might seem, this is it.
00:00:58.399 --> 00:01:01.119
My guest today is Jill Cullen Jefferson.
00:01:01.359 --> 00:01:02.960
Jill, thanks so much for joining.
00:01:03.359 --> 00:01:05.120
Thank you so much for having me, Jeff.
00:01:05.359 --> 00:01:07.359
So walk me through what is your background?
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What brought you here to us today?
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Well, I am a civil and human rights attorney.
00:01:13.680 --> 00:01:16.560
My background, I grew up in the sticks of Mississippi.
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Went to an undergrad, I met Julian Bond, who became my mentor and taught me everything I know about civil rights and human rights.
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He took me under his wing and he became my mentor.
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Years later, when I was in law school, I went to Harvard and I was working in the innovation lab to put together a civil rights organization that was unlike any other that existed.
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And I thought, what should I name this thing?
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And so I named it Julian after him.
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And founded Julian in 2020.
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We are the only organization in the country that has a focus on modern-day lynchings.
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Our mission is to end caste systems in America.
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And I think we've I think we've done some good work in getting to where we need to go and achieving our vision.
00:02:04.319 --> 00:02:07.439
And sort of what what motivates you to do all of this work?
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So it's my purpose on this earth.
00:02:11.120 --> 00:02:25.840
And I know that sounds weird, but like um when I was an undergrad, Professor Bond took me aside and he said, you know, your purpose in life is to be a disciple of civil rights because you understand it better than your peers.
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So you have a responsibility to teach them.
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And I really took that to heart, and it wasn't just him saying it, I fell in love with civil rights, like the history of it, the movement.
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I just I love it.
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I'm in love with it.
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And I had started to investigate civil rights cold cases from the 1960s, like during the civil rights era, people who had been lynched during that time.
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And at one of those conferences about historical lynchings, somebody said, somebody here got lynched two weeks ago and nobody's talking about that.
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And I said, Oh my gosh.
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And so at that point, my focus became focusing on modern-day lynchings and getting attention to those and solving those cases.
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I want to ask a very broad question that sort of comes from my personal experience.
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My dad grew up in Bogaloosa, Louisiana, which I guess would be the sticks of Louisiana.
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Um, are you familiar with Bogaloosa?
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I am, yes.
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All right.
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I haven't been there.
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I think he took me there when I was two.
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Um, was the most recent I've been there, and I know it's changed a lot since then.
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But he would tell me stories of my grandfather and my great uncle, like as one of like six Jewish families in town, they were targeted by the Klan.
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Um, and he would tell me stories about them uh staying up, like sleeping by the door with a rifle and like just ready to for anything that might happen from the clan.
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And my my very broad question is having been involved in this work, uh, how do you think through like communicating all of this, all of this struggle, everything that happened in the the um during the civil rights movement to a generation that maybe doesn't have those firsthand uh stories to live by?
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Yeah.
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So we talk about the evolution of lynching.
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We talk about what it was before and what it is now in terms of, you know, before it would be um mob violence, and people would take souvenirs, like they would cut off body parts as souvenirs and things like that, and take photographs and and share those photographs around like baseball cards.
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And a lot of those photographs still exist to this day, and you can go online and see them.
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We talk about that and we talk about the transition to lynchings being more underground.
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The fact that lynchings now happen through not mob violence, but a couple of people who get together and they're usually radicalized online and they get together and they carry out this act, there's still the aspect of spectacle to it, like there was in the civil rights era.
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But now lynchings, they're they're carried out by small groups, but they're also in some in some instances carried out by police.
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I would call what happened to George Floyd a lynching.
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How would you sort of define?
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Do you have a definition of lynching in the modern sense?
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Or is that something that just sort of you look at a case and you you can kind of feel it?
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Yeah, a lynching is an extrajudicial killing.
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A modern-day lynching, to be to be clear, isn't is a discriminatory killing committed in the late 20th or early 21st century by more than one person carried out for an alleged offense with or without a legal trial or due process?
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And our definition of lynching expands the definition to include cases that are like LGBTQ PLUS and Indigenous women and things like that that haven't historically been included in the definition of lynching.
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So, what what is your sort of investigative process when you're looking at a case?
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Are these the type of things that someone brings brings potential cases to you?
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Do you have research that that looks into these things and finds them first?
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Is there a like first thing that comes to mind that makes you want to investigate a certain case further?
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The first thing that comes to mind is always, is it a lynching or was it a suicide or something else?
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And figuring that piece out.
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These cases come to us in different ways.
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Sometimes people call us and ask us to get on a case.
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In one case, a police officer came to my mother's house and asked me to look into the case.
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In other cases, family members will contact us.
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And in some instances, we find the case on our own and we contact them and see if they would like assistance.
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And so the investigative process, it really looks like after we get the case, the first step is to talk to family and friends.
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A lot of times, family and friends have gotten leads or have ideas of maybe what happened to someone that I that's really helpful to kickstart an investigation.
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The next step is to get all the paper you can possibly get, if there are court documents, if there are police documents, to get all the paper and examine it.
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And then after that, it's a matter of following the individual leads and seeing where they take you, making sure that you don't miss any gaps, making sure that you fill the gaps that the police may have missed and things like that.
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And how does the process, the investigative process, work from there?
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Once we have basically figured out what happened, we then take our information to authorities, whether it be the FBI or the State Bureau of Investigation or local authorities.
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Usually local authorities are not willing to do anything because they're the ones who botched it in the first place.
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And they don't want, they're more concerned about their image than they are about justice, is what I've found.
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And so by any means, we take these facts and everything that we learn to them and we give them all the evidence and when that we urge them to take action to charge the people criminally with murder and with lynching.
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And so in these instances, we haven't, we've gotten some cases reopened, but the local DAs and the local police have been in the way of actually getting new charges filed.
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So is there a sort of a communication pattern that you tend to sort of operate within when you get this information?
00:09:08.159 --> 00:09:12.399
I'm sure you frequently law enforcement is certainly skeptical, I'm I imagine.
00:09:12.559 --> 00:09:13.759
The public might be skeptical.
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You sort of have to overcome a level of skepticism.
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How do you go about sort of overcoming that?
00:09:19.279 --> 00:09:22.720
And what role does just communicating what you're finding play into that?
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Yeah, so it's never as easy as just communicating what we found.
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With every single modern-day lynching case, we have to overcome a suicide designation first.
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The coroner, the crime lab, the police rule it a suicide, and you have to prove that it's not before they will actually, you know, listen to you and what your theory is.
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So you have to disprove theirs.
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And so that's always an uphill battle.
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You have to show the gaps that they've they had in their investigation, the people they didn't talk to.
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You have to present the evidence to them that they missed, essentially, and show them, hey, if you had gotten this right, then you would have seen this different outcome.
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But yeah, we in every case, we have to overcome the designation of suicide first.
00:10:17.679 --> 00:10:19.759
And that's always hard.
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If it's under the jurisdiction of the FBI and you have a good president and administration in, then they can be very helpful in getting things moved and getting states to give traction to things to investigations, but we don't have that right now.
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And so it's basically just down to us to prove the cases on our own and with the evidence that we have and hope that the local authorities will listen.
00:10:51.440 --> 00:10:52.720
What has your experience been with that?
00:10:52.799 --> 00:11:07.679
Is it sort of hit or miss based on the jurisdiction and the police department or or sheriff's office and coroner, or is it certain states or cities that do better that you've come across, or is it just sort of random scattering of you get lucky sometimes?
00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:11.919
Um, I have found that it's always an uphill battle.
00:11:12.240 --> 00:11:22.799
I have not come across a situation where it just happened like in terms of like routine.
00:11:22.960 --> 00:11:28.080
It's always been having to, like I said, disprove and then prove.
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And when you're talking to these DAs, the thing you have to realize is that they work with these police every day.
00:11:36.799 --> 00:11:46.080
And their motivation a lot of times is to protect the people they work with, to protect the police, not really to get justice in the case.
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And so I found in pretty much every instance that we have to go head to head with the DAs in order to get them to seek justice on behalf of these families.
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Can you walk me through any like success stories in terms of your work and taking a case and overcoming all of those hurdles and reaching a conclusion where at least sort of the truth of the case is at least acknowledged?
00:12:14.399 --> 00:12:16.159
The Willie Andrew Jones Jr.
00:12:16.320 --> 00:12:24.639
case is one that I reference often in terms of a victory, even though the DA hasn't completely come around yet.
00:12:24.799 --> 00:12:31.679
Um, we have gotten the case reopened by the Miss City Bureau of Investigation to just set the facts of that case.
00:12:32.000 --> 00:12:41.600
Willie was a 21-year-old black man who was found hanging from a tree in his white girlfriend's front yard in 2018.
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Authorities ruled it a suicide.
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Within 40 minutes of Willie's mother being on the scene, they told her it was a suicide.
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They had not interviewed any witnesses.
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They had not canvassed the crime scene.
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They had not roped off the crime scene.
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They basically had not investigated at all.
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Yet they they came up with this determination.
00:13:05.360 --> 00:13:09.200
We came in, we found a ton of gaps.
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We found witnesses that they had not spoken with, people who heard Willie fighting for his life.
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We put all of that evidence forward to the DA, and the DA still didn't budge.
00:13:20.639 --> 00:13:26.960
We got help from the FBI and in the state U.S.
00:13:27.120 --> 00:13:33.759
attorney's office to put pressure on the local DA and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.
00:13:33.840 --> 00:13:49.039
And so the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation reopened the case and put pressure on the DA and got the DA to say, you know, if I I am willing to to prosecute this, if the evidence is there, but of course the evidence has been there all along.
00:13:49.200 --> 00:13:54.720
And so we we've gotten the case reopened, but we still haven't gotten a favorable ruling.
00:13:54.960 --> 00:13:58.559
And it's been what, eight years from that for that case?
00:13:58.879 --> 00:13:59.519
Yes.
00:13:59.919 --> 00:14:02.159
It takes a lot of time.
00:14:02.559 --> 00:14:20.879
The investigation itself doesn't have to take that long, but usually um when you're dealing with getting other authorities to move or to change their, to change their minds on something, they dig their heels and they it is it is hard to get things reversed.
00:14:21.279 --> 00:14:40.080
Uh sort of on the opposite end, has there been cases where you felt, like at least initially, that there was strong evidence to support your work, to support an investigation, and then the evidence just sort of didn't pan out and despite initial suspicions and and sort of how how do you handle situations like that?
00:14:40.559 --> 00:14:51.919
There have been situations where we thought potentially it was a lynching, and then through investigation we found that it was a suicide instead.
00:14:52.240 --> 00:14:59.360
In those instances, what we do is we we always work closely with the families.
00:14:59.440 --> 00:15:10.720
We don't reveal the identities of the people whose investigations we came out with as suicides, or we work closely with the families to make sure that they get some level of closure.
00:15:10.960 --> 00:15:19.519
In some of these cases, they might disagree, you know, but after we show them the evidence, they tend to, they tend to be more on board.
00:15:19.679 --> 00:15:24.639
But in those instances, is a very, it's a very delicate balance.
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You have to be very aware of their feelings and and the situation.
00:15:32.320 --> 00:15:41.279
Um, and you also have to just really be aware of your own investigation to make sure that you didn't miss anything.
00:15:41.440 --> 00:15:44.080
Like the police missed things in the first place.
00:15:44.399 --> 00:15:47.919
And so, yeah, it takes it takes a lot.
00:15:48.000 --> 00:15:51.600
It's a delicate balance when you find out that it wasn't a lynching.
00:15:51.840 --> 00:15:57.200
You a lot of times have families who have been believing the opposite for years.
00:15:57.440 --> 00:16:03.840
And so it's a matter of of of helping them come to terms with what actually happened.
00:16:04.399 --> 00:16:20.159
Have there been any cases where you were sort of, I mean, you're probably uncomfortable with many of the findings, but sort of uncomfortable or unexpected conclusions that sort of complicate everything for you and and have been sort of difficult to wrap your head around?
00:16:20.399 --> 00:16:26.559
And sort of like, I'm just curious, how do you handle like real, like strong complexity and uncertainty?
00:16:26.720 --> 00:16:30.480
Because that's something that at least in in the crime data world we deal with all the time.
00:16:30.639 --> 00:16:39.440
And how do you how do you express perceptions or express trends where the data's really the information's really uncertain?
00:16:39.919 --> 00:16:45.840
In terms of how we investigate, we investigate until we are certain about something.
00:16:46.240 --> 00:16:48.960
Um, we feel like there's more to find.
00:16:49.120 --> 00:16:56.240
Um, if we're uncertain that there are more people to talk to, more perspectives that we haven't gotten that we need to get.
00:16:56.559 --> 00:17:03.519
Right now, in in one of our open investigations, there is uncertainty about what the cause of death was.
00:17:04.000 --> 00:17:13.200
And that to me just means that we haven't talked to enough people or investigated deeply enough or gotten enough, enough evidence.
00:17:13.519 --> 00:17:22.319
There have been some situations where like the autopsy will say something and witnesses will say something different.
00:17:22.559 --> 00:17:32.559
And that situation is one where you have to really figure out what happened because obviously the independent autopsy, especially, is is is going to be clear about what happened.
00:17:32.640 --> 00:17:34.480
Maybe not the first one by the state.
00:17:34.640 --> 00:17:44.880
But in those instances, you really just keep digging deeper and you talk to additional pathologists to get their perspective and you go back over your notes.
00:17:45.039 --> 00:18:00.160
You know, in terms of like these investigations, I haven't gotten to one yet where I couldn't find for certain what happened to someone, whether it was a suicide, whether it was an accident, or whether it was a lynching.
00:18:00.319 --> 00:18:02.319
And so that hasn't come up as much.
00:18:02.400 --> 00:18:05.599
It just so far, it just means that we need to keep looking.
00:18:05.759 --> 00:18:10.799
But I haven't gotten to a case where at the end of the case, we're still uncertain.
00:18:11.119 --> 00:18:13.680
Do you have any idea how law enforcement perceives you?
00:18:13.839 --> 00:18:17.839
Are there just sort of law enforcement and criminal justice system actors, I guess?
00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:26.720
Are there DAs and sheriffs and police officers that sort of respect your approach but don't necessarily agree with the findings?
00:18:26.799 --> 00:18:30.799
Um, or do you feel feel that there's sort of a contentious relationship pretty much always?
00:18:31.279 --> 00:18:35.920
With the exception of one case, it has been contentious every time.
00:18:36.240 --> 00:18:37.920
People do not like me.
00:18:38.559 --> 00:18:44.400
The authorities don't like somebody coming in and looking at gaps in their work.
00:18:44.640 --> 00:18:49.200
They don't like being exposed for having missed things.
00:18:49.680 --> 00:18:50.000
No.
00:18:50.240 --> 00:18:53.200
And then this work happens in the deep south.
00:18:53.599 --> 00:18:58.960
And I am not naive enough to think that who I am doesn't play a role into it.
00:18:59.119 --> 00:19:01.599
I'm a black woman doing this work.
00:19:02.160 --> 00:19:11.519
And I'm sure that that doesn't make it any easier for anybody to to like me or to get on board with what we're doing.
00:19:11.759 --> 00:19:21.920
And so, with the exception of one case, a case where the it was actually the police who asked us to investigate the case, it has been contentious the entire time.
00:19:22.240 --> 00:19:24.240
And how do you sort of handle that?
00:19:24.400 --> 00:19:32.000
How do you protect sources and continue investigating, knowing that you sort of have a contentious relationship out there somewhere?
00:19:32.319 --> 00:19:33.359
I have allies.
00:19:33.519 --> 00:19:36.079
I don't want to say who they are, but I have allies.
00:19:36.720 --> 00:19:39.440
Name all of your sources on this podcast, please.
00:19:40.880 --> 00:19:45.440
Our allies really do a lot in taking the heat off.
00:19:45.680 --> 00:19:51.599
They will sometimes they'll file things so that I don't have to, so that there isn't a focus on me.
00:19:52.000 --> 00:19:59.039
Sometimes they will have, they'll take meetings so that I don't have to take them and so my identity doesn't have to be involved.
00:19:59.279 --> 00:20:04.480
And so that is how we get around it, having good allies, honestly.
00:20:04.799 --> 00:20:08.880
Can I ask you about your sort of somewhat high-profile arrest in 2023?
00:20:09.359 --> 00:20:09.759
Sure.
00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:10.880
Is that is that okay?
00:20:11.039 --> 00:20:16.880
I mean, I don't want to I'm just curious, like how nobody's ever asked me if they could ask first.
00:20:19.119 --> 00:20:20.319
It feels polite, right?
00:20:20.400 --> 00:20:22.559
Like it is polite, yeah.
00:20:22.960 --> 00:20:26.880
So what one is uh can you sort of describe what happened?
00:20:27.039 --> 00:20:35.680
And two, I'm just curious how has your work or has your work at all changed since that offense or since that that incident, I should say?
00:20:36.160 --> 00:20:43.039
What happened was that Julian, my organization, had sued the Lexington Police Department.
00:20:43.279 --> 00:20:48.000
They had been just completely violating people's rights.
00:20:48.240 --> 00:20:59.119
There were Fourth Amendment violations, 14th Amendment violations, like they were targeting black people, they were using excessive force, they were retaliating against people for free speech.
00:20:59.359 --> 00:21:01.359
It was it was just ridiculousness.
00:21:01.519 --> 00:21:04.960
It was the worst police crisis this country had seen in 50 years.
00:21:05.200 --> 00:21:15.759
And so something that was happening was that this was before the DOJ got involved and before people were were paying attention to what was happening.
00:21:16.000 --> 00:21:22.400
I would go to Lexington and kind of patrol and police the police.
00:21:22.640 --> 00:21:34.880
Um, and so one night when I was doing this, I saw the police pulling somebody over like they were in the process of arresting someone, and I drove by and recorded it.
00:21:35.039 --> 00:21:44.880
I drove back by, and when I drove by the second time, they stopped me and asked me why I was recording them.
00:21:45.680 --> 00:21:48.079
And then proceeded to try to arrest me.
00:21:48.240 --> 00:21:50.240
Well, not try, they did arrest me.
00:21:50.400 --> 00:21:54.079
They told me to get out of the car, would not get out of the car.
00:21:54.319 --> 00:21:58.319
I asked them why they had stopped me because it wasn't a roadblock, you know.
00:21:58.400 --> 00:22:02.400
So why are you just stopping me in the Middle of the road and demanding to see my ID.
00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:10.160
From the perspective of like, like the legal perspective of a stop, things just were not right on their end.
00:22:10.240 --> 00:22:12.000
They things were just really off.
00:22:12.240 --> 00:22:16.960
And so I was not going to get out of the car and I was not going to just allow myself to be arrested.
00:22:17.200 --> 00:22:23.519
So they they pulled me out of the car, pushed me up against the side of the car and put my hands behind my back.
00:22:23.680 --> 00:22:37.599
And and and when they put me in the police car, the white officer who had arrested me, he shaped his hands into like the shape of a gun and acted like he was like putting it to my head and shooting me.
00:22:37.839 --> 00:22:43.920
So we got to the police station and he was really just um, he thought he was gonna intimidate me.
00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:47.839
He was telling me, you know, you're going, you're gonna go to jail tonight.
00:22:47.920 --> 00:22:50.240
And I was like, okay, let's go to jail.
00:22:50.559 --> 00:22:53.519
He ended up taking me to the jail.
00:22:53.680 --> 00:22:57.519
And I spent, I think it was three days in jail.
00:22:57.759 --> 00:23:00.720
But it was honestly a blessing in disguise.
00:23:00.880 --> 00:23:12.319
So we knew that the police had been harassing women and stopping women for the purpose of getting their phone numbers or asking them out on dates and things like that.
00:23:12.400 --> 00:23:18.960
And if the one, if the woman said no, the police would then figure out a way to arrest her, ticket her, or something like that.
00:23:19.119 --> 00:23:22.799
And so I had been trying to reach those women.
00:23:23.039 --> 00:23:26.480
And it came to find out, they ended up being my cellmates.
00:23:26.559 --> 00:23:29.680
Like I get in, I get in jail, and these women are my cellmates.
00:23:29.920 --> 00:23:33.759
The guards were able to get me some paper and a pen.
00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:39.039
I just wrote down their stories and wrote down their contact information for when I got out.
00:23:39.279 --> 00:23:45.680
And so um it ended up being something that was really helpful to our efforts, actually.
00:23:46.079 --> 00:24:05.599
And since then, you know, it's it's definitely set the tone in these cases to show how lawless these this department was, and how they tried to make a point to the community by arresting the leader of their of their local movement.
00:24:05.920 --> 00:24:13.680
They they wanted to send a message to the community that that they could not be stopped, that the police could not be stopped.
00:24:13.920 --> 00:24:17.039
And thankfully that did not go over well.
00:24:17.279 --> 00:24:19.039
Um, and the opposite was shown.
00:24:19.200 --> 00:24:28.720
What they were doing is still what stop was put to it, and justice was found, and at least a DOJ findings report for these victims.
00:24:29.039 --> 00:24:32.079
And how how has that impacted your work going forward?
00:24:32.480 --> 00:24:38.240
Well, now when somebody googles me, the first thing they see is that I was arrested.
00:24:38.480 --> 00:24:41.519
And so that was not the first thing.
00:24:42.960 --> 00:24:44.720
I I was I yeah, I read about it.
00:24:44.880 --> 00:24:47.519
I there was an interview you were giving, I think to the University of Virginia.
00:24:47.599 --> 00:24:49.599
I read about it, so that wasn't the first thing.
00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:56.160
Okay, it wasn't the first thing, but is there it's one of the most more prominent things there.
00:24:56.640 --> 00:25:03.279
I think it's you know thank you to you for continuing to read, but a lot of people don't keep reading.
00:25:03.519 --> 00:25:06.160
They they it's like, oh, she's been arrested.
00:25:06.799 --> 00:25:07.920
I don't want to work with her.
00:25:08.079 --> 00:25:10.160
Why would an attorney get arrested?
00:25:10.400 --> 00:25:19.759
And so I I haven't seen it be like, you know, a positive thing for for the work.
00:25:20.240 --> 00:25:22.240
Um, to be honest with you.
00:25:22.559 --> 00:25:28.799
It's been something that's been more like if people don't get past the headline and like read what actually happened.
00:25:29.119 --> 00:25:40.160
It's it's more like it it looks like incompetence on my end or that I was doing something wrong other rather than the police actually targeting me and arresting me.
00:25:40.400 --> 00:25:46.400
And that was something else that I I forgot to mention that we did find out that the police had targeted me.
00:25:46.559 --> 00:25:58.640
It was a if a former police officer told us that the police had been plotting to arrest me for some time, but they just couldn't figure out how and when um in the right circumstances.
00:25:58.880 --> 00:26:02.480
And so um everything came together that night for them.
00:26:03.039 --> 00:26:03.680
Yeah.
00:26:04.079 --> 00:26:05.920
Well, I I really appreciate you sharing.
00:26:06.160 --> 00:26:09.519
Um it's it's obviously such a unique and important perspective.
00:26:09.599 --> 00:26:11.039
So I really appreciate that.
00:26:11.279 --> 00:26:13.839
I want to sort of turn to the future.
00:26:14.000 --> 00:26:18.960
And I'm curious, do you have a vision for what the future of your work, for what your organization looks like?
00:26:19.119 --> 00:26:27.200
And this is a question I've started asking all of my guests that is there a role for AI specifically in this, or is that just not something that's on your radar?
00:26:27.519 --> 00:26:29.200
AI is on my radar.
00:26:29.440 --> 00:26:30.880
Yes, it is.
00:26:31.440 --> 00:26:42.240
We have to be careful with like the AI data centers and things like that to make sure they're not polluting communities that are already vulnerable.
00:26:42.400 --> 00:26:43.599
I will say that.
00:26:51.279 --> 00:26:56.400
It also just sometimes, like, you know, it can be helpful in brainstorming.
00:26:56.559 --> 00:26:59.920
And so AI does have, does have a place in Julian's future.
00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.880
And what I see our work being is that we're gonna end lynchings for real this time.
00:27:05.039 --> 00:27:07.200
We're going to end lynchings.
00:27:07.440 --> 00:27:11.519
We are going to eliminate systems of caste in America.
00:27:11.920 --> 00:27:26.480
But the biggest thing in that is making sure that these families and these communities are taken care of, making sure that what their vision for what they want and what their future, what they want their future to be, is what we uphold.
00:27:26.640 --> 00:27:36.480
And so I'll say I have a vision for Julian overall to end lynchings, and modern-day lynchings, and to eliminate caste.
00:27:36.799 --> 00:27:47.039
But when it comes down to like the individual details of that, that that depends on the communities that we work with and what they want and how we can help them get there.
00:27:47.279 --> 00:27:47.759
That's great.
00:27:47.920 --> 00:27:52.079
Well, it's certainly an inspiring story and an inspiring uh organization.
00:27:52.160 --> 00:27:54.240
So I really appreciate you coming on, Jill.
00:27:54.319 --> 00:27:56.640
Um, keep up the good work and I wish you luck.
00:27:56.880 --> 00:27:58.400
Thank you so much for having me, Jeff.
00:27:58.480 --> 00:27:59.759
I appreciate it.
00:28:00.960 --> 00:28:03.119
Thanks for listening to the Jeffalytics Podcast.
00:28:03.279 --> 00:28:09.599
Be sure to subscribe and to learn more, head on over to ahdatalytics.com for more information and previous episodes.
00:28:09.759 --> 00:28:14.079
If you like what you heard, please leave a glowing review, which will help others to discover the show.
00:28:14.240 --> 00:28:16.000
Until next time, I'm Jeff Asher.
