50 years after he was chained and set afire, WWI veteran is honored
A traditional three-shot volley salute and the solemn sound of taps echoed across the black cemetery in the Delta flatlands of Arkansas, just across the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tennessee.
The military honors were followed by the jubilant singing of "Amazing Grace." The service had been five decades in the making.
Everyone was here to honor Isadore Banks, an African-American veteran of World War I who was chained to a tree in June 1954, doused in gasoline and burned beyond recognition.
The slaying -- a year before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to whites on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama -- remains one of the nation's oldest unsolved civil rights cases.
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The military honors were followed by the jubilant singing of "Amazing Grace." The service had been five decades in the making.
Everyone was here to honor Isadore Banks, an African-American veteran of World War I who was chained to a tree in June 1954, doused in gasoline and burned beyond recognition.
The slaying -- a year before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to whites on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama -- remains one of the nation's oldest unsolved civil rights cases.