Journalist Stanley Nelson, known for his fearless investigations into unsolved Ku Klux Klan murders in Louisiana and Mississippi, will be honored Wednesday, Oct. 22, at the Old State Capitol in Baton Rouge, 5–7 p.m. The event, hosted by the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication, is free and open to the public.
Nelson, the longtime editor of the Concordia Sentinel in Ferriday, was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for his investigations into unsolved Ku Klux Klan murders. In addition to covering regular news and putting out the paper each week, Nelson wrote 150 stories from 2007 through 2010 on Klan violence, including some identifying the likely suspects in murders in Ferriday and nearby Natchez, Mississippi.
Over the years, Nelson, who died June 5 at age 69, also worked with prominent national journalists, and several of them will speak about him at the Oct. 22 event. They include Hank Klibanoff, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and podcast creator; Brad Lichtenstein, executive producer of “American Reckoning,” a documentary that aired on PBS in 2022; Joe Shapiro, an investigative reporter for NPR; and Jerry Mitchell, an investigative reporter whose work led to the prosecutions of Klan leaders in Mississippi.
Members of the families of two men presumably killed by the Klan—Wharlest Jackson, a civil rights leader in Natchez and Oneal Moore, one of the first Black sheriff’s deputies in the Bogalusa area—will attend the event, as will Nelson’s family. Former Manship School Prof. Jay Shelledy, who started the LSU Cold Case Project to pursue FBI files that could help Nelson, will speak, along with former students who worked closely with Nelson.
Nelson also wrote two books about the Klan and served as an adjunct professor at the Manship School, where he helped mentor dozens of students who have won regional and national awards for their own stories on civil rights cold cases.
“Once Stanley learned about the horrible things that had happened in his area, he could not stop digging into them,” said Christopher Drew, the current director of the LSU Cold Case Project. “He cared so much about the victims, and he did everything he could, including confronting some of the old Klansmen, to provide a greater sense of closure and justice.”
He was a graduate of Louisiana Tech University’s School of Journalism in Ruston.
Louisiana Voice 
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