News editor, author, and historian Stanley Nelson, who was "best known for his reports on criminal injustices and cold cases from the civil rights era," died June 5, the Natchez Democrat reported. He was 69. A longtime Concordia Sentinel editor, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for "his reporting in 2011 to unravel a 1964 murder case in Ferriday [La.] and related unsolved murders."
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During the past two decades, Nelson dedicated himself to telling stories of murder victims of the Ku Klux Klan and wrote hundreds of accounts of those killings, which were published in two books: Devils Walking: Ku Klux Klan Murders Along the Mississippi River in the 1960s (2016) and Klan of Devils: The Murder of a Black Louisiana Deputy Sheriff (2021).
Author Greg Iles posted on social media: "The inspiration for one of the beloved characters in my Natchez Burning trilogy has unexpectedly passed, and his death is a great loss to the South. I'm working on a small piece about journalist Stanley Nelson for our newspaper, but this is some of what has appeared so far. The great reporters of that era have been chiming in since yesterday. It's a dark day for justice."
Vidalia Mayor Buz Craft told the Natchez Democrat that Nelson was a well-read journalist and was respected by all who read his work: "He knew a wealth of information about local history and I think a lot of people took that for granted for a long time. He has been missed from the pages of the Sentinel. I'd met him years ago when I was in the banking business and he was a good guy and always a joy to be around. He'll be missed."
Roscoe Barnes III, cultural heritage and tourism manager at Visit Natchez, said, "Nelson was a man of conviction. He was bold, determined, and fearless in his reporting. I am personally convinced that his journalism, his books and his lectures have made an indelible mark on our area in such a profound way that his name will be remembered for generations to come."