Courtesy NAACP
Elbert Williams
1908-1940
Late at night June 20, 1940, in Brownsville, Tennessee, thirty-one-year-old Elbert Williams became the NAACP's first voting rights martyr.
Born in Haywood County, Tennessee, 1908, a sharecropper's son, when Jim Crow violence reigned supreme, Black life was cheap, often ended on a tree limb or at a fiery stake, and white folks ruled.
Elbert's story is one of a young, married, hardworking, law abiding, God fearing, black man who on the eve of WWII was determined to vote in a majority black county, in the rural South, where Blacks had not been allowed to register to vote in the 20th Century.
Elbert's story is as American as the Battle Hymn of the Republic and as southern as a lynching. On June 20, 1940, Elbert, determined to vote, collided head-on with white supremacists determined to preserve their power monopoly - by all means necessary …. including coldblooded murder.
Elbert Williams
Timeline
“The dead will be waiting because a crime buried without justice is never laid to rest.”
— Scott Pelley, CBS 60 Minutes, “A Crime Against Humanity,” April 15, 2015, and August 23, 2015.
Justice for Elbert Williams
Honoring Elbert's Life & Work
A Memorial Service
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Rev. Clay Evans
Co-Founder with Jessie Jackson of operation PUSH. Founder Fellowship Baptist Church, Chicago, Illinois.
Courtesy, John Ashworth
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Dr. Cornell Brooks
Professor Harvard Kennedy School and the NAACP's eighteenth President.
Courtesy, John Ashworth
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Jim Emison
Author Historical Marker text and Murder on the Hatchie.
Courtesy, John Ashworth
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Memorial Commemoration
Elbert Williams Memorial Commemoration Historical Booklet
State of Tennessee Historical Marker
Courtesy, John Ashworth
On February 27, 2015, the Tennessee Historical Commission honored Elbert Williams with an official historical marker recognizing his unique place in U. S. Civil Rights History. The marker is installed one block east of the court-square in Brownsville, TN, at the corner of U.S. Highway 70, East Main Street and North Jackson Street across from the site of the Sunshine laundry where Elbert Williams worked as the fireman. Following the Memorial Service June 20, 2015, the marker was dedicated by Dr. Reavis Mitchell, Fisk University President, and Chair of the Tennessee Historical Commission.
Locate Elbert Williams Lost Grave
The Grave Seekers, world class experts assembled to locate Elbert Williams lost grave.
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Dr. Clark Davenport
Clark Davenport's career spans more than 50 years of planning, managing, and performing remote-sensing surveys for criminal, environmental, groundwater, geotechnical, mining, and archaeological investigations on six continents. He is a co-founder of NecroSearch International, and the founder of GeoForensics International.
Since 1987 he has pioneered the use of remote sensing in criminal investigations and has personally assisted on more than 85 criminal investigations in 32 states and 7 countries. He serves as a consultant to municipal, federal and foreign law-enforcement agencies including; the FBI, US Secret Service, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, Spanish Guardia Civil, Mexican, Belgian and Dutch State Police Bureaus, Guatemalan Forensic Foundation, Federal Court of Colombia, Australian New South Wales Police and the Russian FSB. He serves as a Scientific Advisor to UK based InForce International. Davenport is a decorated Vietnam combat veteran. He has a degree in Geophysical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and an Associate Degree in Criminal Justice from Red Rocks Community College.
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Dr. Amy Mundorff
Dr. Amy Mundorff, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, at the University of Tennessee is a biological anthropologist specializing in forensic anthropology and disaster victim identification management. Much of her research focuses on managerial aspects of Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) and developing new techniques to locate clandestine burials.
Prior to entering academics, Amy was the Forensic Anthropologist for the Office of Chief Medical Examiner, the City of New York (1999-2004), where she analyzed forensic cases involving unidentified individuals and bone trauma. She helped direct mortuary operations for several disasters, including the World Trade Center attacks, the crash of American Airlines flight 587, and the Staten Island Ferry crash.
Amy also enjoyed a 5-year career right after college as a field archaeologist working on prehistoric and historic sites in California, Hawaii, New York and Jamaica. She earned a B.A. in Anthropology from Syracuse University (1991), an M.A. in Anthropology from California State University, Chico (1999), and a PhD in Archaeology from Simon Fraser University (2009).Hidden Graves Unearthed-Body of Evidence, Discover Magazine, October 2015
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Jeffrey Rinek
Jeffrey Rinek is retired as a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), after thirty years’ service. Jeff served in the Chicago, New York City, and Sacramento Field Offices, making the Sacramento area his home. He has been acknowledged for his work and accomplishments investigating violent crime including violent crime against children and serial violent crime. Jeff received the California Sexual Assault Investigators “Investigator of the Year” award in 2003. In 2006, Jeff was recognized by the International Homicide Investigators Association. Jeff was the primary coordinator for the Sacramento Office addressing Crimes Against Children, the Violent Crime Apprehension Program (VCAP), the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) also known as criminal profiling, and kidnapping. Jeff received notoriety for obtaining the confession of Serial Killer Cary Stayner in the 1999 Yosemite Murders of four women. Jeff is married to his wife Lori of thirty one years, and they are proud of their two sons, a mechanical engineer, and a police officer. They reside with their family of numerous pets in the Sacramento, CA area. Jeff is honored to have been invited, and to participate in this needed important, and historical project. The greatest honor is to have been part of the group of gifted and dedicated professionals who dedicated themselves to the timeless pursuit of justice in this matter.
Rawls Funeral Home record of Elbert Williams Burial.
Courtesy Rawls Funeral Home
Courtesy John Ashworth
Ryan North performing ground penetrating survey, Taylor Cemetery.
Courtesy John Ashworth
Dr Amy Mundorff laying off the GPR grid.
Credit: Courtesy John Ashworth
Taylor Cemetery where Elbert Williams lies un-honored, lost, awaiting discovery.
Courtesy John Ashworth
The Rawls Funeral Home burial record indicates Elbert Williams was buried somewhere in historic African American Taylor Cemetery.
Courtesy John Ashworth
Family history says Elbert is buried within the area depicted in this photograph and was marked with a milk churn which has long since disappeared.
Courtesy John Ashworth
In 2014 Dr Ryan North, a volunteer with Necro Search International performed a ground penetrating survey of the area where family history located Elbert Williams's grave. Eleven unmarked graves were imaged.
In 2018, District Attorney Garry Brown reopened the murder investigation and obtained a court order of exhumation. However, the ground penetrating radar data had been lost, and the location of Elbert's grave remains yet unknown. The search has not been abandoned, and hope remains that through technological advances or discovery of new evidence Elbert Williams' grave will be found and marked with the honor befitting the voting rights hero that he is.
Continuing Elbert Williams Work
Elbert Williams' work continues. Say his name - Elbert Williams!
The Elbert Williams Memorial Scholarship at the University of Tennessee Winston College of Law, has been established by Jim and Betty Emison for African American and Native American students who plan to provide legal services to underserved communities.
In 2025 the Elbert Williams Interpretive Center, a Tennessee nonprofit, modelled on the Emmett Till Interpretive center in Sumner MS, was incorporated to advance Elbert Williams' work of educating and motivating voters in a nonpartisan fashion.
The National Park Service has undertaken the Congressionally mandated Memphis Area Lynching Location Special Resources Study, including Haywood County sites associated with Elbert Williams for the possible inclusion in a unit of the national park system committed to preserving the history of lynching.
The District Attorney in the 28th Judicial District of Tennessee, reopened the Elbert Williams homicide investigation in 2018.