Cleve McDowell, second Black student to attend Ole Miss, found shot to death; client charged

Jet, March 31, 1997

A 19-year-old client of Cleve McDowell has been charged with the murder of the civil rights attorney, who in 1963 was the second Black student to attend the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss).

Juanrez Webb was arrested in Indianola, MS, and charged with capital murder. He was being held without bond in the Sunflower County jail, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution reported.

"Webb was a client of Cleve's and had been seen with him the day Cleve was killed," District Attorney Frank Carlton told the newspaper.

A police officer found McDowell, 56, in an upstairs bedroom when he responded to reports from the victim's family that the door to his home was open and his car, a brown 1995 Cadillac, was missing, said Police Capt. Albert Robinson.

McDowell, who lived alone in the small town of Drew, MS, was shot twice, Robinson said.

Authorities found McDowell's car in Indianola. Webb was not in the car, but he also faces grand larceny charges for its theft. Carlton told the Journal Constitution that there were indications that Webb had driven McDowell's car from Drew back to Indianola.

McDowell represented a number of people in civil rights cases during three decades and was a public defender in Sunflower County. During the 1980s he was executive field director of the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP.

He entered the University of Mississippi Law School on June 6,1963, but was later expelled after he was discovered carrying a concealed weapon on campus. McDowell said he did not feel safe walking to class after marshals guarding James Meredith, the first Black to attend Ole Miss, left.

He received his law degree from Texas Southern University in Houston, TX, and returned to Mississippi to practice.