The medical examiner never wagered a guess as to whether George Washington Singleton was murdered; police didn't investigate. The president of the Charlotte chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People deemed the explosion suspicious and asked the national NAACP to press for an investigation, according to a copy of a letter sent after Singleton's death in 1957.

Now, FBI agents may finally look into how Singleton died. The FBI is expected to announce today that its civil rights unit will examine some of the casualties of race battles waged in the South through the 1950s and 1960s. Singleton's is one of three North Carolina cases that could be opened.

"It's right to stir the pot," said Andrew Blejwas, communications coordinator for the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights nonprofit that has given the FBI a list of people who died suspiciously during the civil rights era; advocates at the Alabama-based center had deemed the people on the list "forgotten."

"Some people have gotten away with murder for 50 or 60 years," said Blejwas, who helped research the cold cases. "That's just not OK."

Singleton's unresolved death is one of 74 that has gnawed at Southern Poverty Law Center advocates since the late 1980s. The center's files were tucked away, stuffed with random clues. In some, there are copies of index cards, labeled "civil rights," culled from the U.S. Department of Justice archives. One such card was found in the National Archives for William D. Owens of New Bern, a World War II veteran and father of three who died of a skull fracture in 1956 while being held at the local jail. New Bern police picked him up a few nights earlier for being drunk, the card notes.

Clarence Cloninger of Gaston died in jail, too. Local jailers denied him medical care after he suffered a heart attack in 1960; his widow's complaint is captured in the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights files.

A few months ago, an FBI agent rang the Southern Poverty Law Center, asking about unsolved cases involving any of the 40 who are remembered on a monument in Montgomery, Ala., Blejwas said. Instead, the center handed over its list of the "forgotten" 74.

"They certainly weren't expecting 74 names," Blejwas. "I think they thought we'd give them five or six."

The FBI declined to discuss its plans for these cases. Blejwas said the FBI has compiled even more names of civil rights victims whose deaths they might investigate.

Blejwas is realistic about what agents might turn up after all these years. But he hopes they can jostle enough memories to bring closure to at least some of the families of the forgotten.

"Even if it's just one, it was worth it," Blejwas said.

(News researcher Denise Jones contributed to this report.)