The story

The blaze engulfed Frank Morris' shoe repair shop in minutes, bright orange flames stretching 60 feet into the air. Morris was so severely burned, only the soles of his feet were spared.

He clung to life for a few days before dying in a hospital. It was December 1964. Morris, a 40-year-old African-American, repaired shoes for blacks and whites in Ferriday, Louisiana, a small town near the Mississippi border terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan.

Nearly 44 years later, not a single person has been charged in the killing. Last year, the Justice Department made investigating about 100 civil rights era killings, including Morris', a priority after urging from the Urban League, the NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups.

The Rev. Robert Lee Jr. said on his deathbed, Morris never named his killers but said two "white friends" carried out the attack.

"He thought they were his friends, and he said, 'Yes, I thought they were my friends,' " Lee, now 94, recently said. Read full article »

CNN's Wayne Drash contributed to this report.

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