 In 1956, for example, he privately praised Hoover's campaign to discredit T. R. M. Howard, a maverick civil rights leader from Mississippi.During a national speaking tour, Howard criticized the FBI's failure to seriously investigate cases such as the 1955 killers of George W. Lee and Emmett Till.In a private letter to Hoover, Marshall "attacked Howard as a 'rugged individualist' who did not speak for the NAACP."