John Earl Reese

Case summary

Incident

On Oct. 22, 1955, 16-year-old John Earl Reese went to a neighborhood cafe in rural east Texas with two of his cousins, Johnnie Merl Nelson, 15, and Joyce Faye Nelson, 13. The teenagers lived in the Black community of Mayflower, an area that had been terrorized in the previous six months by three nighttime drive-through shooting incidents, as reported by local newspapers. Reese had previously witnessed one of those shootings; on April 3, 1955, he was in a cafe when someone shot into the building. On the evening of Oct. 22, the Nelson sisters' aunt gave the three teenagers a ride to Buddy Hughes’ place, a cafe where patrons could buy soda and dance. Their aunt would later tell reporters that as she drove away from the cafe, she believed she saw some white teenagers removing the license plate from their car.

While Reese and the Nelsons were dancing at Buddy Hughes’ place, a black Ford sped past the cafe and someone fired nine bullets from the car. They hit all three teenagers, seriously wounding Reese, and injuring Johnnie and Joyce Nelson. At the time they were shot, Reese and Joyce Nelson were dancing together. According to news reports, the car drove down Highway 149 and turned into Mayflower. The shooter in the car continued firing, hitting a Black school bus, personal vehicles, mailboxes, a home, and a Black school. Police reported a total of 27 bullets fired from an automatic .22 pistol. Reese died from his wounds at 5 a.m. on Oct. 23 at Gregg Memorial Hospital.

Aftermath

Immediately after the incident, newspapers reported local speculation that the attack was in response to a $200,000 bond issue that had been passed for a new Black school building in Mayflower. The speculation tied together three different incidents in the six months since the election. According to reporters, Rusk County police had no records of the previous shootings and had “lost” reports of the investigations. In interviews with newspapers and letters to the Department of Justice (DOJ), local law enforcement stated that they could not find any evidence that race was a factor in the shootings. The DOJ and the FBI looked into the case but did not open an investigation because they asserted that they had no information that indicated law enforcement officers were involved in the shootings. They referred the case to the Post Office Department because shooting the mailboxes was a violation of federal law. The Post Office Department conducted an investigation and interviewed key people in the case, then chose to take no further action.

The Texas Rangers joined local law enforcement to investigate the case. On Jan. 25, 1956, 21-year-old Perry Dean Ross and 22-year-old Joe Reagan Simpson, both white men, were arrested and charged with murder in the killing of Reese. Both men gave written statements admitting to the killing and were held at Gregg County Jail in lieu of a $5,000 bond. They signed statements that they had gone on a “raid,” the term Ross and Simpson used for shooting at Black people in Mayflower. Ross confessed to similar shootings on three other occasions. Local law enforcement maintained that “racial tension” was not at play in the case and told reporters that instead they believed that Ross and Simpson “attempted to have some fun” scaring Black people. In February 1956, a grand jury in Gregg County delivered a special report stating they found “absolutely no indication or suggestion of racial difficulty involved” after returning an indictment against Ross and Simpson. In April 1957, Ross stood trial for murder. During the trial, his defense attorneys argued that he was firing with the intention to scare Black patrons of the cafe. An all-white jury ultimately convicted Ross of murder “with malice aforethought” and recommended a five-year suspended sentence. Ross never served time in jail. The prosecutor dismissed the case against Simpson.

Ross died in Carthage, Texas on Jan. 8, 1976. Simpson died on June 30, 1998 in Peoria, Arizona.

In 2008, the DOJ reopened the case as part of its Cold Case Initiative. As both subjects were deceased at the time of the reinvestigation, the DOJ did not pursue prosecution.

On Oct. 23, 2010, Joyce Faye Nelson, community leaders, and people affiliated with Northeastern University’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) gathered in Longview to memorialize John Earl Reese. They unveiled a new gravestone, laid beside his original stone at Smith Chapel Cemetery. Local officials facilitated and paid for the installation of a civil rights marker at the site of the former Mayflower school and the renaming of a local street to John Earl Reese Road. The community also placed a commemorative marker in the Tatum Public Library. Reese’s half-siblings — his father’s children from a second marriage — attended the event. They recalled the grief and pain their father experienced throughout the rest of his life.

CRRJ also successfully petitioned for John Earl Reese’s death certificate to be changed to reflect that his death was a homicide, rather than the “accident” recorded in 1955.

Media Gallery

Case summaries are compiled using government records and archival primary source material. These include, but are not limited to, investigative records, arrest reports, newspaper articles, court filings, census records, birth and death certificates, transcripts, and press releases. In many cases, the records contain contradictory assertions.

In addition to the incident files associated with this case, this summary relied on the following:

Genealogical Records

• Death Certificates for Texas, United States, Texas Bureau of Vital Statistics, 1955
• Texas Birth Index, Texas, United States, 1939

News Coverage

• “2 Accused in Killing by ‘Playful’ Gunfire,” Victoria Advocate (Victoria, TX), January 27, 1956
• “Death Weapon Still Missing,” Marshall News Messenger (Marshall, TX), January 30, 1956
• “File Murder Charges in Death of Young Negro,” Del Rio News Herald (Del Rio, TX), January 26, 1956
• “Four Months Old Killing is Solved; Deny Race Issue,” Longview Daily News (Longview, TX), January 27, 1956
• “Indictments Returned in Slaying of Negro,” Dallas Times Herald (Dallas, TX), February 4, 1956
• “Killer Gets Leniency,” Miami Herald (Miami, FL), April 26, 1957
• “May Have Held Up Solution, Prince Assets,” Longview Daily News (Longview, TX), January 27, 1956
• “Negro Boy Murdered in West Texas: New School for Negroes May Be Issue,” Texas Observer (Austin, TX), November 2, 1955
• “Negro Boy Shot Saturday Dies,” Longview Daily News (Longview, TX), October 24, 1955
• “No Clues Found in Negro Killing,” Longview News-Journal (Longview, TX), November 8, 1955
• “Race Probe Sought in East Texas,” Victoria Advocate (Victoria, TX), November 16, 1955
• “Reese Investigation Widens,” Texas Observer (Austin, TX), November 16, 1955
• “Two White Men Charged with Race Violence,” Odessa American (Odessa, TX), January 26, 1956
• “Two White Youths Charged in Slaying of Mayflower Negro,” Daily Journal (Commerce, TX), January 26, 1956
• “Whites Quizzed in Reese Slaying,” Texas Observer (Austin, TX), November 9, 1955
• Dave Davies, “Law Professor Unearths Cases of Racial Violence From the Jim Crow Era,” NPR, September 27, 2022