Isadore Banks Military Honors 56 Years After Violent Race Killing

Isadore Banks' Receives Military Honors 56 Years After Death: One of U.S's Oldest Unsolved Civil Rights Cases

Isadore Banks, WWI African-American veteran, was chained to a tree, covered in gasoline and burned alive in June 1954 and his case remains one of the United States' oldest unsolved civil rights cases. On Wednesday April 7 2010, Isadore Banks was finally given military honors for serving his country in WWI.

In a cemetery in Arkansas, the sound of taps could be heard as well as a three-shot volley salute as about a hundred people gathered to pay their respects to Isadore Banks and see him receive his military honors for his service in WWI.

Isadore Banks and the Town of Marion

When Banks returned from the war he became one of the wealthiest landowners in the region and helped bring electricity to Marion in the 1920s. After his violent death however, many black people in the community left and did not return, although some would still come to the spot where he was killed. As CNN states:

No one has ever been officially investigated or charged for the crime, but some elders who are still alive today say they know the names of those who killed Banks.

There are a few theories as to why some people wanted Banks dead. One was that some white men wanted to buy his land and he did not want to sell. Another was that he had beaten up a white man who had courted his daughter Muriel, and a third was that he was carrying on an affair with a white woman he was renting land from.

However, over 90 years after Isadore Banks first went to war in the final year of WWI, one of his daughter's Dorothy Williams received a folded American flag from Army Spc. Matthem Garland. Ms. Williams released five white doves representing each year her father had been dead and a granddaughter released a sixth dove that represented Banks himself.