The investigation into the 1940 slaying of civil rights worker Elbert Williams is being reopened.

Haywood County District Attorney Garry Brown said Wednesday that his office is launching an investigation into the death of the 32-year-old Williams, who was black.

His body was found in Hatchie River near Brownsville in June 1940, three days after he was taken from his home by a group of men led by a police officer, according to recent research.

On June 23, 1940, Williams body was recovered from the river and six miles south of Brownsville—not far from the Highway 76 Bridge.  The Haywood County coroner held an inquest on the banks of the river and said, “Cause of death…we believe was by foul means by party’s unknown.”

But that’s about where the investigation stopped.

The Department of Justice initially ordered the case presented to a federal grand jury, then mysteriously reversed itself and closed it in 1942.

A U.S. attorney in Memphis declined to reopen the investigation on legal grounds in 2017. Tennessee’s new Civil Rights Crimes Cold Case Law of 2018, signed this May by Governor Bill Haslam mandates a statewide survey of cold civil rights crimes.

Most believe Williams is buried in the Taylor Cemetery near Tabernacle and that’s where a University of Tennessee Anthropologist will begin the new investigation.  The hope is Williams remains can be recovered and studied to determine the cause of death.

In Tennessee, there is no statute of limitations on murder—though the person responsible is likely long deceased.

An NAACP official has called Williams “the first martyr of the NAACP.”