Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63

by Taylor Branch

FBI agents eventually returned to Liberty to comply with Doar’s request. Louis Allen took the fateful step and told them officially that he had seen no tire iron and that Hurst had simply shot Herbert Lee in a rage. The agents also reinterviewed the only other witness, a white man who had testified that he saw Herbert Lee raise a tire iron against Hurst. Now this witness conceded that he never saw the tire iron until “it was removed” from beneath Lee’s body. The passive construction “was removed” appeared four times in the FBI interview report, without any sign that the interviewing agent ever asked who it was that had removed the tire iron. Such neglect of logical, urgent investigative leads drove Doar to despair. The judge who had presided at the coroner’s inquest was interviewed, as Doar requested, but the interviewing agent did not obtain the minutes of the inquest, nor even report that he had asked for them.