(Mint Press) – The first openly gay candidate for public office in the state of Mississippi was found beaten, dragged and set on fire before being dumped near a river last week. In a statement issued by the family of Marco McMillian, a coroner who performed an autopsy on McMillian told the family of the brutality of his death.
“We feel this was not a random act of violence based on the condition of the body when it was found,” the McMillian family said. “Marco, nor anyone, should have their lives end in this manner.”
Coahoma County Sheriff’s Department has released few details about this case or any possible motive. The department is not treating this case as a hate crime.
McMillian, 33, was a candidate for mayor in his hometown of Clarksdale, Miss. — a Mississippi Delta community of 18,000. The Mississippi Delta, or the highly agricultural intersection of the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers in the northwestern corner of the state, is known as much for being the birthplace of the blues and rock ‘n’ roll as it is for being “The Most Southern Place On Earth.” Southern, in this case, refers to the generalization of attitudes in the American South; the region also is economically-depressed and devoid of industry.
A day after McMillian’s body was discovered, a 22-year-old African-American man, Lawrence Reed, was arrested and charged with murder in conjunction with this case. McMillian had been missing since Feb. 25 when his sport-utility vehicle was involved in a head-on collision. McMillian was not present in the vehicle at the time of the incident.
McMillian dedicated his campaign toward reducing crime and unemployment in the heavily agricultural community, which has been bleeding residents and jobs for years and faces high levels of violence and unemployment. Doris Haynes Miller, another Democratic candidate for mayor, has reported that she was recently robbed at gunpoint in the town.
Hate and love in Mississippi
The family of McMillian has called for a hate crime investigation. Prior to his death, McMillian feared for his own protection, McMillian’s godfather Carter Womack said. “He was very concerned about his safety — people had tried to talk him out of the race,” Womack said to the Clarion-Ledger. “The family feels this ought to be investigated [as] a hate crime.”
McMillian’s body was found naked, bruised and swollen.
Others echo the call for a hate crime investigation, including Larry Nelson, Sr., president and CEO of Victims Group of Violent Crimes in Jackson. “This was a hate crime. I don’t care if the perpetrator was black, white, or polka dotted.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation are both monitoring and engaging into the investigation, due to the nature of the crime.
“In this case, the FBI will continue its ongoing dialogue and sharing of information with the local and state agencies, and will continue to monitor this investigation for any indication that a potential violation of federal law exists,” Daniel McMullen, special agent in charge of the FBI for Mississippi, said in a statement.
Mississippi does have a hate crime law. However, the law — as it stands now — does not have a provision for bias based on sexual orientation. The FBI, however, can make a ruling that this case was a sexual orientation-based hate crime and promote it to a federal charge.
The FBI became involved at the bequest of Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who asked the FBI to “review the circumstances and evidence” in the murder of McMillian. Thompson’s daughter attended college with McMillian and McMillian was a friend to the Thompson family.
“If another set of eyes looking at it would provide additional information, I think it would be helpful to the McMillian family,” Thompson told The Associated Press in a phone interview.
The loss of McMillian rocked everyone in the small community. “There’s a lot of people upset about it,” Clarksdale resident Dennis Thomas, 33, told the AP. “Why would somebody want to do something like that to somebody of that caliber? He was a highly respected person in town. He’s been in the community helping out a lot.”
There is reason, however, to think this case is not a hate crime. Memphis television station WPTY has issued a story that assert that friends of Reed indicated that Reed and McMillian recently met at a Clarksdale bar and became close. Sometime between late Monday night or early Tuesday morning of the week of McMillian’s death, McMillian made a sexual pass at Reed that was rebuffed, as Reed is heterosexual, according to his friends.
The friends repeated this story to the Sheriff Department’s investigators, leading to the determination that this incident was not a hate crime. McMillian’s friends, however, counter by saying that the two men were romantically involved and were fighting immediately before the killing. “They were having an affair,” 18-year-old Carlos Jones said. “They got to tussling.”
Afterward, Reed allegedly took McMillian’s vehicle and drove in it until he collided with another vehicle near the maximum-security Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Reed is currently in stable condition and under police custody at the Regional Medical Center at Memphis.
“I grew up with him,” family friend and neighbor Tony Jackson said of McMillian. “He was always very intelligent, very quiet. Everybody knew his (sexual) preference, but it didn’t matter.”
Prior to his run for mayor, McMillian served as international executive director of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, and was a member of the faculty for Alabama A&M University and Jackson State University and was chief executive officer of his own consulting firm, which helped establish and manage not-for-profit organizations.
McMillian would have faced state Rep. Chuck Espy (D-Clarksdale) — the son of current mayor, Henry Espy, former gubernatorial candidate Bill Luckett, Miller and independent Brad Fair in November’s mayoral election.