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Twenty minutes after the police chief's departure, Sunflower County Circuit Judge Gray Evans filed an order to seal McDowell's residence, making discussions of any findings or evidence from the crime scene illegal for any officers and personnel working the crime scene, Davis said.

Evans' gag order remains in effect, even though the investigation was closed years ago, asserts the Sunflower County assistant district attorney who refused access to any of the police investigation or court records stored in the courthouse basement in Indianola, even though the gag order never covered court officers.

"The family would have to approve first," stated a Sunflower County judge who backed the ADA's denial of a request for McDowell's records.

"The police chief was saying awful things about Cleve when he came out of the house. I know that Judge Gray was just trying to tone things down before the gossip got out of hand," Davis said. "But I wouldn't think he meant for the gag order never to be lifted." While McDowell's records remain unavailable, Webb's case files kept in the courthouse were accessible and indicated

--An autopsy performed in Jackson the night of March 17, 1997, on McDowell by Steven T. Hayne, M.D., the state's deputy coroner, indicated "negative" signs of any drug abuse. --Cause of death was given as a "gunshot wound of the left neck, distant and perforating." --The death was listed as a homicide. --Three gunshot wounds fired in "close temporal proximity" but not at close range, "perhaps up to a distance of 15 feet" were described by the coroner: a "nonlethal" wound consisting of a "nonlethal distant and perforating gunshot wound of the left back," a "nonlethal distant and perforating gunshot of the left shoulder with re-entry penetrating gunshot wound of the left temple" and a "lethal distant and perforating gunshot wound of the left neck." These descriptions could not be put into sequential order, the report stated.

The autopsy report did not give information regarding the range from which the gun was fired, but in 2004, a physician practicing forensic medicine was asked to read the report and give his opinion. The physician said that shots could have been fired from fifteen feet away. The physician also speculated there could have been more than one shooter, given the angles of the three shots. But information about each of the bullets causing these wounds was not available in the report, making it difficult to reach a specific conclusion.

EARLY ON, MCDOWELL distinguished himself academically -- as an outstanding Drew High School speech and debate competitor who continued his studies on a scholarship at Jackson State University in the state's capital city of Jackson.

In the fall of 1963, McDowell was the first black student after James Meredith to be admitted to the University of Mississippi, and the first ever to study law at the James O. Eastland School of Law, named after the Delta's late segregationist U.S. senator whose home was seven miles from Drew in the cotton town of Ruleville (also home to civil rights leader Fanny Lou Hamer, a friend of McDowell's).

Soon after the murder of his mentor, civil rights leader Medgar Evers, McDowell learned that he and his college roommate James Meredith were next in line for assassination, he told Owen Brooks during an oral history interview in 1996.

Self-defense became an issue for McDowell after the few U.S. marshals who had been living on the campus to protect Meredith left after his graduation in August. McDowell bought a mail order gun and applied for a permit to carry it, telling a school chaplain that he had purchased the gun because he was "scared" and "afraid somebody might kill him."

"Most everybody else had one," McDowell told a civil rights historian in a 1996 oral history interview. "But when mine was discovered, I was expelled." (Sheriff Joe Ford who arrested McDowell also headed the Oxford, Mississippi White Citizens Council and was tipped off about McDowell's pistol according to Sovereignty Commission records.)

Praised in a recommendation letter by the University of Mississippi's liberal law school dean, who was upset over his student's dismissal, McDowell transferred to the Thurgood Marshall School of Law in Texas, a "better and safer" place to be," where he was class president and an honors graduate. (The University of Mississippi's current law school dean refused to provide a copy of the letter for this report.)

It was a good move since the Texas law school was emphasizing civil rights law while the University of Mississippi was far behind, McDowell told interviewer Owen Brooks. Transcripts of this interview are not available according to state archive officials.

McDowell was not a radical reformer; there are few Sovereignty Commission records mentioning him except for his short time spent at the University of Mississippi and later as a civil rights movement participant and a Headstart coordinator. He was not a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) but remained an active member of the more conservative NAACP, serving in later years as state field director of the Mississippi Conference. McDowell also represented clients in various social justice and civil rights cases over three decades.

But the Drew attorney and community leader quietly set records for black achievement: he was named to the state Penitentiary Board from 1971 until 1976 and named by the governor as state director for Head Start from 1972 to 1976. No other black Mississippians had held such influential state positions for over 100 years, since Reconstruction. In his own community, McDowell was elected vice-mayor to the town council and served on the school board.

Cleveland McDowell also served as a Sunflower County judge from 1978 to 1982 and ran unsuccessfully for the Legislature in 1978 and 1987. His friend, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, appeared in the Delta to help with the campaign. For a short time, McDowell was a legislative aide to conservative U. S. Senator Trent Lott. He later became a minister and organized a small church in Drew where he spent most of his days in the last three years of his life.

ON AUGUST 21, 1997, nineteen-year-old Juarez Webb of Indianola was indicted by Sunflower County grand jurors on charges of capital murder and robbery of McDowell. Recently, McDowell had been Webb's court-appointed attorney on burglary charges.

"The police thought Webb killed Cleve to steal his Cadillac, money and jewelry. It was all missing from his home when his body was found. They said Webb confessed to the killing when he was arrested," Davis says.

Five months later, Webb filed a petition to reduce his plea from capital murder to manslaughter, claiming he "shot and killed Cleve McDowell, without malice, in the heat of passion" and "not in necessary self-defense." At Webb's preliminary hearing Drew Police Chief Burner Smith had testified that Webb told police "McDowell had thrown him on the floor and tried to pull his pants down to sexually assault him," reported the Jackson Clarion-Ledger.

Webb's plea was accepted and charges were reduced. "District Attorney Carlton said accepting Webb's plea was the best decision" since the case was "not iron-clad" and that McDowell "needed to be remembered for what he did as a leader in the Civil Rights Movement at a time when that wasn't too popular," the Clarion-Ledger reported.

But then in July, Webb reversed himself again and filed a jailhouse petition to withdraw the manslaughter plea, citing "a series of interrogations, threats and promises [made to him] by various law enforcement officials" and "a series of statements of an incriminating nature [that were] obtained ... in taped, written and oral form against the Petitioner's will and conscent [sic]."

Interrogations, Webb claimed, were "unsolicited" and "initiated by ... the instance [sic] of arresting officers and other varies [sic] courthouse officials." Webb said he did not waive his rights to silence or counsel or self-incrimination, but that he was forced unwillingly and without counsel present to answer questions. Webb said that his family was "repeatedly harassed by law enforcement officials and was told by his attorneys that he would get the death penalty if he did not take a plea for a lesser charge of manslaughter." And Webb asserted the charge of capital murder was dropped to manslaughter "due to the pressure and threats and unlawful statements obtained as well as other evidence and unlawful arrest against his will." Webb admitted giving "false statements in court to end the truma [sic] and nightmare and to protect his family from further threats and harassments ... [the] guilty pleas was made unwillingly, involuntarily and [he] was coerced to give his plea to avoid a big trial and publicity on his family." Webb asked to withdraw his plea of guilty and to prove his innocence "so that the real suspect can be caught." Webb asserted that he was "coerced" into pleading guilty to manslaughter by his attorneys:

"They told me I wasn't going to be able -- I wasn't going to be able to get nowhere in this case, that I might as well go ahead and take a plea; otherwise, it would be over with me.... I guess they were talking about my life," Webb stated in his petition.

On July 9, 1999, Circuit Judge Gray Evans denied and dismissed Webb's motion writing that it had "probably" been a "wise" recommendation by Webb's attorney to urge Webb to plead guilty to manslaughter rather than face the possibility of a death sentence from a conviction of capital murder.

MEANWHILE, SIX MONTHS after McDowell's murder, a fire occurred in downtown Drew, devastating the town's largest department store and the lawyer's vacant office next door. All of McDowell's records collected for years on unsolved race-based murders, lynching and related crimes were reportedly destroyed.

Flames were so high that some Cleveland residents could see the "lighted sky" eleven miles away from Drew, according to news accounts. Some Drew residents reported hearing an "explosion" in Drew at the beginning of the fire.

Drew police chief Burner Smith refused to release the records of the fire asserting they are at the Sunflower County Courthouse in Indianola. Smith has since retired.

Hailey Gail Bridges, the Sunflower County assistant district attorney, stated the records, "if they are at the courthouse," were not available to the public.

Bridges, a graduate of the University of Mississippi, never did get along with McDowell, several former colleagues said. "He would beat her nearly every time in court. And then he would make fun of her. She really hated him," Nettie Davis said.

Like so many other blacks working for voting rights (and pro-integration whites, as well), McDowell was a Sovereignty Commission target, and a moderate number of records remain in the commission's files on him. McDowell had received advance copies of his Sovereignty Commission files "to look over before they were made public" -- just one week before he was murdered. McDowell did not appear disturbed over what he saw, Davis said.

One record gave the name of a possible Jackson "homosexual partner" of McDowell's while he was a young black man on the rise -- someone who impressed the Governor. Another record placed him with James Meredith in a homosexual encounter.

SOMEHOW, MCDOWELL KNEW OF his preeminent death; he told his Drew minister, Rev. Jesse Gresham, that he expected to die and asked Gresham to conduct the funeral service.

The minister believes McDowell's murder could have been related to a very large settlement he won for a client who lived near Tunica and "may have involved something to do with a utility company." McDowell had invited Gresham and his wife to dinner shortly before he was murdered.

"He said he had won 'the big' case he'd been working on and for once had lots of money. I didn't know much of anything about this case, but I did hear that no attorney in Memphis would take it. Some say there might have been mob involvement."

But Gresham offered another story adding further mystery to McDowell's murder. Two of McDowell's close friends independently recalled this same incident that occurred several years before his death:

McDowell learned that a close friend, Henry S. Mims, an Alabama lawyer who also grew up in Drew, was dead -- that he "committed suicide." But McDowell did not believe Mims would kill himself -- this was not in his personality.

Continue to Part 3...