By GEOFF PENDER
The Florida Klansman refused to give his real name.
On the courthouse steps where blacks were once beaten for getting too “uppity,” in a town Martin Luther King Jr. once called the worst he’d ever seen, in a county where the Klan once controlled law enforcement and murderous deeds went unanswered, in a state many still view as the spiritual center for racism, the Klansman, accompanied by only one compadre, also from out of state, was afraid to give his name and appeared more than a little nervous.
Things are changing in Philadelphia, Neshoba County and Mississippi. I found it memorable, noteworthy and ironic that a Klansman provided one of the clearest examples of that change before the start of the trial of Edgar Ray Killen for the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964.
Perhaps the Klansman realized this: The changing in Neshoba County isn’t cosmetic and wasn’t coerced. It isn’t being brought about by the federal government, the national media or any other outside force.
It’s being brought by the community, led by the Philadelphia Coalition, a group of white, black and Choctaw civic leaders who demanded justice, who wanted to start a real change in this community which, it looked like for so long, would forever be pegged by the movie “Mississippi Burning” as one of the most hateful places on earth.
The change is certainly coming agonizingly slowly. Many continue to point out the obvious, that this community, the state and the nation still have a long way to go.
And there’s always the possibility this change could fizzle.
I saw an example of this later on the same day I met the timid Klansman.
At a convenience store, I stood in line behind a young man, early 20s, who wore a colorful T-shirt with a large Rebel flag on the back. It read “Rebel University,” and, in mock Latin, “Hatus demyankees.” He wasn’t none too interested in talking to a reporter.
But perhaps in the final analysis, this change, four decades slow in beginning but starting from within, is better, more substantial, than any that could have been forced earlier. Maybe it marks that something at Mississippi’s core has turned; something good that will spread.
I just heard one television commentator state: “The rest of the country needs to follow the lead of the Philadelphia Coalition.” To which the anchorperson had to clarify: “That’s Philadelphia, Mississippi.”
I don’t recall ever hearing such.
In an eloquent column, Neely Tucker, a Washington Post writer and native of the Neshoba area noted:
“They got Edgar Ray. Not the black people he so detests. Not the reporters from New York and Washington and London, whom he loves to taunt and threatens to shoot. Not the card-carrying ACLU commies.
“No, it was Edgar Ray Killen’s Neshoba County neighbors – conservative white folk who vote Republican in overwhelming numbers – who dropped the hammer on him in the Philadelphia, Miss., courthouse.
“And lifted a historical weight from themselves.”
Geoff Pender covers politics and state government for The Sun Herald. His email address is capitalbureau@aol.com
