"Please I am asking you all for justice."

More than 600 pages of federal documents involving four civil rights cold cases – all from the 1940s – were released this week by the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board, a nonpartisan panel of private citizens appointed by the President to review and release records of unsolved or unresolved cases involving civil rights violations between 1940 and 1980.

The newly-released files include that of Willie Lee Davis, a 24-year-old Army technician who was on furlough in middle Georgia on July 3, 1943. That evening, Davis was at a juke joint, dressed in his service uniform, when he was shot and killed by James Bohannon, the local police chief. Although an Army investigation determined that Bohannon had “unjustifiably” killed Davis, a U.S. Supreme Court decision in an unrelated case ultimately made prosecuting Bohannon more difficult, and the charges against him were dropped in 1945. That same year, Davis’ mother, Ethel Davis, wrote federal authorities, including Eleanor Roosevelt, asking, “Is there any justice in the South[?]” She went on to write that “I don’t mind giving up my boy for my country, but not to … come home to see his mother and kill[ed] for nothing. … Please I am asking you all for justice."

Another case involves Aletha Bell Carter, a 17-year-old high school student from South Carolina. On Aug. 15, 1943, Carter did not come home after running an errand to her aunt’s house. Her father and his son went looking for her, and found her body face down in a pool of water near the roadside. Reporting in the Black press identified a potential suspect – an insurance salesman who had stopped at a local home to wash blood from his hands. But there is no indication of any arrest or investigation into Carter’s death.

The two other cases released this week concern William Fowler, a 23-year-old cook shot in the head in 1941 by a Spartanburg, South Carolina police detective; and Alfonzo Merritt, a 39-year-old coach cleaner fatally shot by a Tuscumbia, Alabama police officer.

This week’s release brings to 44 the number of cases released by the Board since October 2024. Summaries of each of the cases can be found on the Board’s “Cases” page. The summaries also include links to the National Archives’ cold cases portal, where the documents themselves can be viewed and downloaded.

The Board’s work is currently mandated to sunset no later than January 2027. Legislation that would extend the Board’s tenure until 2031 is currently pending before Congress.