Edgar Brown

Case summary

Incident

On August 4, 1949, Mose Brown of Fort Gibson, Mississippi, wrote the U.S. War Department personnel office to request an investigation into the death the previous month of his 27-year-old son, Edgar, a World War II Army veteran who was serving a sentence for simple assault and battery at a prison farm in Cleveland, Mississippi. “He was killed there,” Mose Brown wrote, “seemingly by some of the officers of the farm, a few weeks ago. And all evidence points to that he was murdered by some of the officers of the farm.”

Mose Brown wrote that he was not notified of his son’s death until after Edgar had been buried. The elder Brown referenced unnamed witnesses that “know he was killed right in Cleveland by the officers.”

Aftermath

On October 6, 1949, FBI Special Agent George Gunter issued a report detailing his investigation into Edgar Brown’s death, which included questioning Mose Brown. According to the report, Mose Brown told Gunter that the witness Brown had spoken to was a “C. Wells,” who lived in Cleveland and was brother-in-law to Mose Brown’s wife. According to Mose Brown, Wells told him that Edgar Brown had slipped away from a prison road gang to visit a woman who lived near Wells. Three officers came to the house and shot Edgar Brown, Wells told Mose Brown.

Gunter questioned C. Wells, whose full name was Eashmel Wells. According to the FBI report, Wells denied that he told Mose Brown that he had been a witness to Edgar Brown’s death. Wells did say he had “heard negro residents at Cleveland, Mississippi talking about a man who had escaped from the County Farm being killed by local officers at ‘The Big House,’ which is a negro rooming house … in Cleveland.” Further investigation by Gunter determined that there was a “dangerous criminal” whom police had shot and killed at the rooming house, but it was not Edgar Brown.

Gunter interviewed W.J. Hendon, manager of the county farm and courthouse, who said that Edgar Brown – who’d been a trusty while in custody – had been mowing the lawn near the courthouse on July 8, 1949 when he’d attempted to escape through a nearby cornfield. Officers surrounded the cornfield in order to apprehend Brown, only to find Brown lying unconscious in the field, apparently overcome by heat. He died soon after, and Dr. W.W. Payne, the county physician who examined Brown’s body, said he found no wounds or marks on his body, and concluded Edgar Brown had died of “acute heat prostration.” However, Payne did not sign Brown’s death certificate until September 20, 1949 – more than two months after Brown’s death and a week after the FBI launched its investigation.

In a letter to Mose Brown dated October 27, 1949, assistant attorney general Alexander Campbell wrote that “your son was not killed by local law enforcement officers, but rather … his death was due to heat prostration.” The case was closed.