Hank Klibanoff, Director of the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was recently quoted in an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The piece focuses on the 1950 murder trial of Clarence Henderson, a Black Carrollton sharecropper convicted of murdering a White Georgia Tech student under highly-questionable circumstances. Prompted by a new book, The Three Death Sentences of Clarence Henderson, the Carrollton county District Attorney is revisiting the case. The Associated Press also recently covered the DA’s decision in the article, “Prosecutor might seek sharecropper’s posthumous exoneration.” Read an excerpt from the AJC article below, along with the full piece here: “Georgia DA revisits decades-old murder case against sharecropper.”

“Hank Klibanoff, an Emory University professor and director of the school’s Civil Rights Cold Cases Project, said addressing injustices from decades past is important, even when the victims and perpetrators are dead.

“‘There is a very important judgment that history can make,’ he said.

“There also is the chance for healing. Klibanoff and his Emory students have delved into several Jim Crow era racial killings and cold cases. In one case, the white descendant of one of the named murderers was so moved by their findings that he sought out the victim’s daughter to apologize.

“‘It went an enormous way to salving their wounds,’ he said.”