John Earl Reese

John Earl Reese, 16, was shot and killed on the night of October 22, 1955, while dancing with his cousins in a café in Mayflower, a small Black community near Longview. Perry Dean Ross, driving roughly 85 miles per hour, fired nine shots from a rifle into the café window as his car passed; Reese was killed, and two of his cousins were wounded. The same night, gunmen fired into at least one other home in the area where Black residents lived. The attacks were tied to local anger over a bond election to build a new school for Black children following the Brown v. Board of Education decision; Ross later admitted his anger over the new school had “a great deal” to do with the shooting. The local sheriff initially refused to investigate, insisting Black residents were responsible for their own community's shooting. Texas Rangers eventually interviewed over 300 people and identified Ross and a second man, Joe Simpson, both of whom confessed. Simpson's charges were dropped in exchange for his testimony against Ross, who was convicted of murder in April 1957 and given a two-to-five-year sentence that was immediately suspended; Simpson later pleaded guilty to the same charge and received an identical suspended sentence. Neither man served any time in prison.

Mayflower, TX · Rusk County

• 1955: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• Victim identity and the October 22, 1955 date and circumstances, per the DOJ's public case file and extensive contemporaneous and historical reporting.
• Perry Dean Ross and Joe Simpson both confessed and were convicted, but both received fully suspended sentences and served no prison time, per the same sources.

• Whether the other shootings that same night at additional homes were connected to the same group of men was never conclusively established.
• The full scope of who else may have been involved in planning the night's attacks beyond Ross and Simpson was never investigated.

• U.S. Department of Justice — Notice to Close File
• The Dallas Morning News — “FBI takes new look at white men's killing of black teen in 1955”
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs