For more than a quarter century, Frank Morris ran one of the most successful African-American businesses in Concordia Parish, operating a busy shoe shop on Hwy. 84 in Ferriday from the late 1930s until 1964 and serving both black and white customers in a region where few black businessmen in the South did so. Known as an outgoing, friendly, and talkative man, he took pride in his work, repaired shoes, sold dry goods, did leather work for ranchers and horsemen, traveled to improve his trade, gave many young black men their first jobs, served as an early member of the NAACP and an usher at Mercy Seat Baptist Church, and hosted a weekly gospel radio show on KFNV. During the early morning hours of December 10, 1964, Klansmen spread gasoline around his shop and set it on fire. As Morris slept in a small back room, he confronted his attackers moments before the blaze was set, but a man outside pointed a shotgun at him and blocked his escape through the front door. Forced to flee through fire and smoke to the back, the 51-year-old emerged completely naked, his body smoldering, and left a trail of bloody footprints as he ran to safety. He suffered third degree burns over 100 percent of his body and died on December 14, 1964, after giving the FBI some details of what had happened. The bureau launched an intensive investigation that went cold by late 1965, reopened the case in 1967, and later the U.S. Department of Justice included his killing among unsolved Civil Rights era murders under review in 2007. The crime occurred as the Civil Rights movement collided with a more violent Ku Klux Klan, and Morris' business success, interracial clientele, and possible dispute over free shoe repair for a deputy may have made him a target. In 2011, Thomas Perez of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division called the murder an "unspeakable act," a grand jury in the parish was convened to investigate further, and by the spring of 2012 the case remained under federal investigation as Ferriday continued to confront its racial past.