BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – For many families who lost loved ones to racial violence during the Civil Rights era, justice never came through law enforcement. Instead, decades later, it arrived through the work of a Louisiana journalist determined to uncover the truth.
That journalist was Stanley Nelson. Nelson was a longtime editor of the Concordia Sentinel, a 2011 Pulitzer finalist, author, and co-founder of the Cold Case Project at LSU. His reporting focused on unsolved murders committed by one of the most notorious groups in American history: the Ku Klux Klan.
Nelson died in June, but his life’s work continues to make an impact. He was recently honored during a special program in Baton Rouge for his years spent investigating some of the South’s darkest crimes. It’s the same work that gave families long-awaited peace…