Rose colored hatred

[SteveMacD]

Former Mayor Defends Ex-Klansman, KKK
By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS


PHILADELPHIA, Miss. - The defense rested Monday in the trial of a former Ku Klux Klanman in the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers after a former mayor testified that the white-supremacist group was a "peaceful organization."

Harlan Majure, who was mayor of this rural Mississippi town in the 1990s, said Edgar Ray Killen was a good man and that the part-time preacher's Klan membership would not change his opinion.

Majur said the Klan "did a lot of good up here" and said he was not personally aware of the organization's bloody past.

"As far as I know it's a peaceful organization," Majure said. His comment was met with murmurs in the packed courtroom.

After the defense rested, the judge began reading instructions to the jury, to be followed by closing arguments.

Killen, an 80-year-old sawmill operator, faces the first-ever state murder charges in the case and could get life in prison if convicted. He did not testify.

The victims — James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner — were helping register black voters. They had been stopped for speeding, were jailed briefly and then released, after which they were ambushed by a gang of Klansmen. They were shot, their bodies found 44 days later buried in an earthen dam in rural Neshoba County.

Also Monday, David Winstead testified that his brother, Mike Winstead, 52, lied in testimony last week when he claimed to have overheard a conversation between his grandfather and Killen in which the defendant acknowledged playing a role in the killings.

However, David Winstead acknowledged that he was a friend of the Killen family and was not present during conversations that his brother, who was 10 years old at the time, claimed to have overheard.

On Sunday, Schwerner's widow joined local residents for an annual memorial service in memory of the three young men who were killed.

"It's important that we seek to understand how a government became complicit in terror and how good people looked aside and let it happen," said Rita Bender, Schwerner's widow, after the service at Mount Zion United Methodist Church.

She said it was important to understand the racial climate in Mississippi in the 1960s because "governments can run amok again."

The victims were investigating a church burning in this small Mississippi town when they were murdered as part of a plot allegedly carried out by the Klan. Klansmen had come to Mount Zion and beaten members of the all-black congregation before setting it ablaze.

Killen's name has been associated with the 1964 slayings from the outset. FBI records and witnesses indicated he organized carloads of men who followed Chaney, a black man from Mississippi, and Schwerner and Goodman, white men from New York.

Their disappearance focused the nation's attention on the Jim Crow code of segregation in the South and helped spur passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Killen was tried in 1967 along with several others on federal charges of violating the victims' civil rights. The all-white jury deadlocked in Killen's case, but seven others were convicted. None served more than six years.

[GateandGarden]

It was great when the defense attorney, during his closing arguments, said something like "I know he's been asleep part of the trial, but he's been with you in spirit." :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

I think it was on CNN that they were showing Killen (unfortunate last name?) sleeping while the attorney was carrying on about him.

Sorry I didn't address the actual issue. :o

[amber]

huh. That's pretty interesting. Thanks for posting.

[Johnny Stew]

Majur said the Klan "did a lot of good up here" and said he was not personally aware of the organization's bloody past.

"As far as I know it's a peaceful organization," Majure said.Well, I'm very relieved to hear that the Klan is actually a peaceful organization.

Somehow or another, I had the wrong idea about them. :rolleyes:

[GODDESS6]

the jury took a preliminary vote before leaving for the day & was tied 6-6~
i watched as much of this as i could, killen acts obilvious as too what is goin' on & the sleeping while on trial really bugged me along w/ his high blood pressure episode the day of opening arguements~

[lbelle1214]

I'm from a pretty small town. Lumberton, Tx. Ever heard of it...probably not. Does Vidor, Texas ring any bells? We're about 20 miles from there. When I moved here 21 years ago, the Knights of the White Camellia(?) parked a bus at the intersection of the highway and the road I lived on, stopping people, trying to recrute members. I have never been more scared or offended in my life. Lunatics! Didn't this incident you're speaking of happen in 1964? What's wrong with the justice system?

[GODDESS6]

http://omaha.cox.net/cci/newsnational/national?_mode=view&_state=maximized&view=article&id=D8AS4B1O0

06-21-2005 11:51 AM
By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS, Associated Press Writer

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. -- An 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman was convicted of manslaughter Tuesday in the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers _ exactly 41 years after they disappeared.

The jury of nine whites and three blacks reached the verdict on their second day of deliberations, rejecting murder charges against Edgar Ray Killen.

Killen showed no emotion as the verdict was read. He was comforted by his wife as he sat in his wheelchair, wearing an oxygen tube. Heavily armed police formed a barrier outside a side door to the courthouse and jurors were loaded into two waiting vans and driven away.

Civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were ambushed on June 21, 1964. Their bodies were found 44 days later buried in an earthen dam. They had been beaten and shot.

The notorious case inspired the 1988 film "Mississippi Burning."

Prosecutors had asked the jury to send a message to the rest of the world that Mississippi has changed and is committed to bringing to justice those who killed to preserve segregation in the 1960s. They said the evidence was clear that Killen organized the attack on the three victims.

Killen's lawyers conceded he was in the Klan but said that did not make him guilty. They pointed out that prosecutors offered no witnesses or evidence that put Killen at the scene of the crime. Killen did not take the stand, but has long claimed that he was at a wake at a funeral home when the victims were killed.

While Killen was indicted on murder charges, which could carry a life sentence, prosecutors asked the judge to allow the jury to consider the lesser charge of manslaughter, which has a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Attorney General Jim Hood said earlier that with a murder charge, prosecutors must prove intent to kill. With a manslaughter charge, he said, prosecutors need to prove only that a victim died while another crime was being committed.

Killen was only person ever brought up on murder charges in the case by the state of Mississippi.

Killen, a part-time preacher and sawmill operator, was tried in 1967 on federal charges of violating the victims' civil rights. But the all-white jury deadlocked, with one juror saying she could not convict a preacher. Seven others were convicted, but none served more than six years.

The trial moved along swiftly, with testimony over only four days. Many of the witnesses from the 1967 trial now dead; this time, their testimony was read aloud to the jury from the transcripts.

Chaney, a black Mississippian, and Goodman and Schwerner, white New Yorkers, were in Neshoba County to look into the torching of a black church and help register black voters during what was called Freedom Summer.

The three were stopped for speeding on the night of the attack, jailed briefly, and then released, after which they were followed out of town by a gang of Klansmen and intercepted.

Witnesses _ primarily Klansmen _ testified that Killen was a local Klan organizer who led meetings where members discussed the "elimination" of Schwerner, whom they called "Goatee" because of his beard.

Witnesses said on the day of the slayings, Killen drove about 35 miles to Meridian and rounded up carloads of Klansmen to intercept the three men in their station wagon. According to testimony, Killen told some Klansmen to get plastic gloves and helped arrange for a bulldozer to bury the bodies in an earthen dam.

Killen's case marked the latest attempt in the Deep South to deal with unfinished business from the civil rights era.

In 1994, Mississippi won the conviction of Byron de la Beckwith for the 1963 sniper killing of state NAACP leader Medgar Evers.

In Alabama, Bobby Frank Cherry was convicted in 2002 of killing four black girls in the bombing of a Birmingham church in 1963 _ the deadliest attack of the civil rights era. In 2001, Thomas Blanton was convicted in the bombing.

State prosecutors also have reopened an investigation into the 1955 slaying of Chicago teenager Emmett Till in the Mississippi Delta. Till was kidnapped from his uncle's home after being accused of whistling at a white woman. Three days later, the 14-year-old's mutilated body was found in a river. Earlier this month, his remains were exhumed and autopsied.

In the case against Killen, prosecutors told jurors that a conviction was crucial in showing the world that times have changed in Mississippi.

"Because the guilt of Edgar Ray Killen is so clear, there is only one question left," prosecutor Mark Duncan said. "Is a Neshoba County jury going to tell the rest of the world that we are not going to let Edgar Ray Killen get away with murder any more? Not one day more."

Defense attorney James McIntyre urged the jury to "vote your conscience" and acquit Killen. "There is a reasonable doubt," the lawyer said.

The bald, gray-haired Killen was brought into court each day in a wheelchair _ the result of a logging accident in which he broke his legs. Killen had to be taken from the courthouse in a stretcher last week to be treated for high blood pressure _ the same day that Schwerner's widow took the stand.

Rita Schwerner Bender took a riveted courtroom back in time to 1964, when she and her husband stayed in Mississippi with black families but had to constantly move around because of threats against their lives.

She also recalled the day when she was told that authorities had found the burned-out shell of her husband's blue station wagon in a swamp.

"I think it really hit me for the first time that they were dead, that there was really no realistic possibility that they were alive," Bender said, occasionally looking as though she was fighting back tears. A few in the courtroom wiped away tears during the testimony.

[JazmenFlowers]

Former Mayor Defends Ex-Klansman, KKK
By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS


PHILADELPHIA, Miss. - The defense rested Monday in the trial of a former Ku Klux Klanman in the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers after a former mayor testified that the white-supremacist group was a "peaceful organization."

Harlan Majure, who was mayor of this rural Mississippi town in the 1990s, said Edgar Ray Killen was a good man and that the part-time preacher's Klan membership would not change his opinion.

Majur said the Klan "did a lot of good up here" and said he was not personally aware of the organization's bloody past.

"As far as I know it's a peaceful organization," Majure said. His comment was met with murmurs in the packed courtroom.

After the defense rested, the judge began reading instructions to the jury, to be followed by closing arguments.

Killen, an 80-year-old sawmill operator, faces the first-ever state murder charges in the case and could get life in prison if convicted. He did not testify.

The victims — James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner — were helping register black voters. They had been stopped for speeding, were jailed briefly and then released, after which they were ambushed by a gang of Klansmen. They were shot, their bodies found 44 days later buried in an earthen dam in rural Neshoba County.

Also Monday, David Winstead testified that his brother, Mike Winstead, 52, lied in testimony last week when he claimed to have overheard a conversation between his grandfather and Killen in which the defendant acknowledged playing a role in the killings.

However, David Winstead acknowledged that he was a friend of the Killen family and was not present during conversations that his brother, who was 10 years old at the time, claimed to have overheard.

On Sunday, Schwerner's widow joined local residents for an annual memorial service in memory of the three young men who were killed.

"It's important that we seek to understand how a government became complicit in terror and how good people looked aside and let it happen," said Rita Bender, Schwerner's widow, after the service at Mount Zion United Methodist Church.

She said it was important to understand the racial climate in Mississippi in the 1960s because "governments can run amok again."

The victims were investigating a church burning in this small Mississippi town when they were murdered as part of a plot allegedly carried out by the Klan. Klansmen had come to Mount Zion and beaten members of the all-black congregation before setting it ablaze.

Killen's name has been associated with the 1964 slayings from the outset. FBI records and witnesses indicated he organized carloads of men who followed Chaney, a black man from Mississippi, and Schwerner and Goodman, white men from New York.

Their disappearance focused the nation's attention on the Jim Crow code of segregation in the South and helped spur passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Killen was tried in 1967 along with several others on federal charges of violating the victims' civil rights. The all-white jury deadlocked in Killen's case, but seven others were convicted. None served more than six years.

I'm from Jackson, Mississippi and this story is, of course, all aver the news and it is terribly sad. This man is like 83, in a wheelchair and on breathing assistance. I'm glad, though, to see that the 3 slain men and their families have some sort of peace. I don't know how this man is going to survive in prison...if he ever makes it. During the press conference, I shuddered when the DA and others talked because it makes MS look so stupid...ugh.

[GateandGarden]

I wish it had been murder instead of manslaughter. I figure that it would mean something, if only symbolically, and besides that he's going to die in jail either way. I don't think either verdict would have made much of a difference to him.

[JazmenFlowers]

I wish it had been murder instead of manslaughter. I figure that it would mean something, if only symbolically, and besides that he's going to die in jail either way. I don't think either verdict would have made much of a difference to him.

very true...