By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA — It’s not the kind of thing folks talk about over sweaty glasses of sweet iced tea, not in this polite little town of 7,300, where blacks and whites mostly appear to live in harmony and strangers give each other friendly nods as they pass on the courthouse square.
Ku Klux Klansmen. Beatings. Church burnings. Three civil-rights workers shot to death and buried in a red-clay dam – the white ones face up, the black one face down.
Still, 41 years after the June 21, 1964, slayings of black Mississippian James Chaney and white New Yorkers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, the state of Mississippi brought murder charges and put on trial a one-time local Klan leader _ 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen, a craggy-faced sawmill operator and part-time Baptist minister known around these parts as “Preacher.’’
The massive 1964 investigation of the slayings was dramatized in the 1988 movie “Mississippi Burning.’’
Prosecutors put on four days of testimony from the composed widow of one of the workers and the tearful mothers of the other two; from retired FBI agents who recalled in vivid detail the hostility they encountered during the 44 days between the workers’ disappearance and the unearthing of the three bodies; and from a former Meridian police officer who had been sworn into the Klan by Killen in 1964 and heard “Preacher’’ talk about the slayings before the bodies were found.
Defense attorneys called one of Killen’s brothers and one of his sisters as character witnesses. They also called former Philadelphia mayor Harlan Majure, who caused a stir in the courtroom when he called the Klan “a peaceful organization.’’
A jury of nine whites and three blacks deliberated almost six hours this past Monday and Tuesday before finding Killen guilty of the lesser offense of manslaughter. One juror who wanted to convict Killen for murder said some on the panel weren’t convinced prosecutors fully proved the element of intent – the difference between the two crimes.
Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon gave Killen the maximum sentence of 60 years; 20 for each of the three deaths.
“Each life has value. Each life is equally as valuable as the other life and I have taken that into consideration,’’ Gordon lectured Killen from the bench. “The three lives should absolutely be respected and treated equally.’’
Testimony started on June 16, exactly 41 years after Klansmen torched a black church to lure Schwerner – the bearded 24-year-old they called “Goatee’’ – up to Neshoba County.
The verdict came on June 21, exactly 41 years after the killings.
And, the sentence was handed down on June 23, exactly 41 years after authorities found the burned-out hull of the civil rights workers’ blue Ford station wagon.
“There’s some sort of cosmic justice working somewhere,’’ said Stanley Dearman, who was editor of the local newspaper, the Neshoba Democrat, from 1966 to 2000.
University of Vermont political scientist Howard Ball traveled to Mississippi to watch most of the trial. His book about the 1964 slayings, “Murder in Mississippi,’’ was published late last year, and he’s working on a separate book about the prosecution of the case.
Ball, who was a member of the faculty at Mississippi State University from 1976-82, said the Killen trial could be one of the last of its kind, where prosecutors – primarily in the South – have revived decades-old cases against those who killed in the name of preserving segregation.
“You probably won’t see too many trials of these people because they’re dying off,’’ Ball said. “The hope is that this is the last of these trials of the generation of unregenerate Klansman, and the hope for the future is that we’ve gone past this era of violence and brutality and that the state is moving toward a more positive environment for all people.’’
Ball said he’s skeptical that federal and state prosecutors will be able to successfully bring new charges in another high-profile civil rights-era case now in the news – the 1955 slaying of 14-year-old Emmett Till, who was kidnapped from his uncle’s home in the Mississippi Delta after being accused of whistling at a white woman. Three days later, his mutilated body was found in a river.
Two white men were acquitted of Till’s murder and later bragged about the killing in a magazine article. Investigators reopened the case last year, and earlier this month, Till’s remains were exhumed and autopsied.
After the Killen verdict, some in the community were left with the itching dissatisfaction that he was the only one convicted for a crime carried out by a mob.
“I hate he has to go down alone,’’ said Nettie Cox, a member of the a local racial reconciliation group, the Philadelphia Coalition.
Dearman had long pushed for the case to be reopened.
“I’ve been told on numerous occasions from people who heard (Killen) brag about it, that ‘you won’t have any more trouble our of those people,’’’ he said.
Prosecutors never challenged witnesses’ testimony that Killen was at a local funeral home when Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were run off a dark country road and killed. They said that didn’t matter, that if Killen helped plan and carry out the crime, he could be found guilty.
Dearman said Killen “was the producer and director’’ of the slayings.
The former editor praised District Attorney Mark Duncan and Attorney General Jim Hood for taking the case to court.
“You talk about bravery and courage,’’ he said. “These men are heroes in my book.’’
The trial drew journalists from as far away as France and Belgium and spectators from as far away as Pennsylvania and California.
Patrick Smith, an executive committee member for the NAACP chapter in Americus and Sumter County, Ga., drove five hours from his home in Columbus, Ga., to watch the closing arguments. The slayings of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner happened four years before Smith was born, but the 37-year-old said he was drawn to the trial by a sense of history instilled by his parents, who had an intense interest in the civil rights movement.
Smith said he still finds it sad that people of good conscience didn’t stand up to Klansmen who committed violence against civil rights workers in the 1960s.
“I don’t understand how complicit the good, Christian people can be when they do nothing or say nothing,’’ Smith said.
P.J. Frederick drove 20 hours from her home in Hollidaysburg, Pa., with her cousin, Mary Ann Colledge of Baltimore.
Frederick, now 56 and a first-grade teacher, lived in Philadelphia, Miss., for 18 months in 1976 and 1977 as a worker for VISTA, Volunteers in Service to America, the domestic branch of the Peace Corps. She taught reading and helped with black voter registration _ some of the same activities Schwerner and Chaney did and Goodman intended to do, had he lived more than a day after arriving in Mississippi.
Before the verdict was read, Frederick was apprehensive.
“It sounds like such a cliche, but we need justice, we need truth, we need light,’’ she said.
After the verdict, the cousins celebrated.
“I’m surprised. I’m flabbergasted,’’ Colledge said. “I just think justice was done. I think there’s a little more light shining today and we’re one step closer to the top of the mountain.’’
