One of the most infamous unsolved murder cases in US history has finally been put to bed...sort of. 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen was arrested on charges of murder, after a forty year stint of freedom. Not surprisingly, he's only the first in a line of as yet unnamed suspects to be charged.

The trial for the 'Mississippi Burning' killings that took place in 1967 yielded seven convictions, but none for murder.

In a surreal display of stagnated social evolution, plenty of good ol' boys turned out to denounce the reopening of the case, including one of the convicted men.

"After 40 years, to come back and do something like this is ridiculous . . . like a nightmare," [Billy Wayne] Posey said, according to the Associated Press.

While it's hard to believe that anyone could still be so willfully ignorant and racist, this is the deep south. Hopefully, this will be one of the first nails in the coffin of bigotry and hatred. We can only pray that people like this will be left behind by the forward march of logic and reason. Sad to say, I won't be holding my breath.

crispy

NEWSWIRE

Philadelphia, PA

JAN 07, 2005 01:07 PM

Another linked article that requires registration ...

Here's the article in its entirety:

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

'Mississippi Burning' Case Reopened; 1 Man Arrested

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 7, 2005; Page A01

Mississippi delved into its troubled past late yesterday as sheriff's deputies arrested an 80-year-old reputed Ku Klux Klan member on charges of killing three young voting rights workers in 1964 in one of the most notorious crimes of the civil rights era.

Edgar Ray Killen, known as "The Preacher," was taken into custody in central Mississippi hours after a grand jury convened in Philadelphia, Miss., to hear evidence in the killing of the three activists, a crime dramatized in the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning." The names of the three -- Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney -- have long been synonymous with the horrors that often accompanied attempts to desegregate the Deep South and bring basic voting rights to the disenfranchised.

Killen is the first person to be arrested on murder charges in the 41-year-old case.

"It's something that was late in coming," Goodman's mother, Carolyn Goodman, 89, said in a telephone interview from her home in New York. "I just knew that somehow this would happen -- it's something that had to be."

Neshoba County Sheriff Larry Myers told the Associated Press that more arrests will follow the jailing of Killen, who was acquitted of federal conspiracy charges when the case was first tried in 1967. Indictments will be announced today.

The case, like so many slayings of the civil rights era, lingered in the minds of the next generations of civil rights activists. It came to be known as the "Mississippi Burning" case after the film's release, but its mysteries remained unsolved. As the years passed, evidence surfaced, keeping the case alive for the victims' family members, who have maintained that justice was denied.

In 1999, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger published an interview with Sam Bowers, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard who said he was glad to see the ringleader of the crime go free. Later, a group known as the Philadelphia Coalition pushed Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood to reopen the investigation. Previous attorneys general had looked into the case, including Michael Moore, the former top Mississippi lawyer best known for his role in the nationwide settlement between the states and major tobacco companies. But no arrests had been made.

Mississippi has had some success over the years in exorcising demons of its past with high-profile prosecutions of decades-old cases. In 1994, Byron De La Beckwith was convicted in the 1963 assassination of NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers, 37. In 2003, Ernest Avants, 72, a reputed Klansman, was convicted of killing a black sharecropper named Ben Chester White as part of a plot to assassinate Martin Luther King Jr. by luring him to southern Mississippi.

Avants had been acquitted in 1967 -- the same year that the men accused of killing Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney went on trial. One of those men -- Billy Wayne Posey, who was convicted of conspiracy in 1967 -- was among those who streamed into the grand jury room yesterday in Philadelphia, a pit-stop town of 7,300 northeast of the capital city of Jackson.

"After 40 years, to come back and do something like this is ridiculous . . . like a nightmare," Posey said, according to the Associated Press.

Reopening the case has not appeased all the victims' relatives. Ben Chaney, the younger brother of James Chaney, has called the latest investigation a sham that may target one or two unrepentant Klansmen but spare wealthy and influential whites who he said had a hand in the killings. Ben Chaney told the Associated Press that he and others had asked Hood early last year to turn the case over to the FBI with the goal of having a special prosecutor named to take up the investigation.

The slayings of the multiracial trio -- Schwerner and Goodman were white New Yorkers, and Chaney was black and from Meridian, Miss. -- took place during the fabled Freedom Summer, when hundreds of idealistic young people flooded into the South to educate blacks about voting rights. The three friends disappeared but were later found buried in the muck of a country dam. They had been beaten and shot.

After a massive federal investigation, seven men were convicted by an all-white jury on federal conspiracy charges in 1967, but none of the men faced murder charges and none served more than six years in prison. Killen went free after the trial. One juror reportedly said he refused to vote to convict a preacher.

Carolyn Goodman said yesterday that she hoped the men who killed her son would someday be "behind bars and think about what they've done." She found herself thinking about the last time she spoke with her son. He was resolute, she said.

"He said, 'Mom, these people are our people. I want to make our Constitution real to them,' " she recalled, her voice quavering slightly with the conflicting emotions of the day. "He said, 'I have to go there.' It was hard for us to say, but we said, 'Yes.' "

I put a 'spoiler' tag on it so it won't take up the entire page.

[Edited on Jan 07, 2005 by crispy]

swingkitten

Portland, OR

OLD SKOOL

JAN 07, 2005 01:12 PM

Yeah, yeah, I know the guys are old and shit- but this makes me happy. Very happy.

crispy

NEWSWIRE

Philadelphia, PA

JAN 07, 2005 01:15 PM

Definitely a step in the right direction.

TheLibra

Bridgeport, CT

October 2003

JAN 07, 2005 01:31 PM

This news made me incredibly happy- one [maybe two] of the boys were from my town. It'll be interesting to see how the trial pans out. *crosses fingers*

luckyride

Portland, OR

May 2003

JAN 07, 2005 01:51 PM

i wish this story was getting as much media attention as ashlee simpson's horrible performance at the orange bowl.

katiebarthedoor

Louisville, KY

December 2004

JAN 07, 2005 02:28 PM

better late than never. one of the jurors was dismissed because she couldnt convict a "preacher"

crushjunkie

Vancouver, BC

October 2003

JAN 07, 2005 02:38 PM

Good.

frankenrob

Madison, WI

October 2003

JAN 07, 2005 03:25 PM

Better late than never. I hope it helps the familys and friends of the victims although I can not imagine anything would.

Jessewestend

I'm lost

OLD SKOOL

JAN 07, 2005 03:50 PM

Do me a favor and don't be so ignorant and blind as to think the south has a monopoly on bigotry and backwards thought. Our entire nation stands by while Africa is choking on its own blood in lieu of food, so I'd say the racist violence is still strong///

frankenrob

Madison, WI

October 2003

JAN 07, 2005 05:03 PM

I don't think I'm ignorant or blind I was refering to the article not to the violence across the world.

Jessewestend

I'm lost

OLD SKOOL

JAN 07, 2005 05:17 PM

not ignorant?

While it's hard to believe that anyone could still be so willfully ignorant and racist, this is the deep south.

Is Boston not rife with racism? Is there not prejudice in Detroit? North and South are irrelevant the ignorant are ignorant across the country and pretending its a southern problem or MORE of a problem in the south is pretty ridiculous, I have never heard the N word more in my life than from people from the north, maybe its bc they think "hey I can't be racist bc I'm not from the south", Who knows? All I know is unless people see it as a nation wide issue the problem won't go away. When LBJ passed the Fair Housing Act the greatest resistance was from the north not the south, We don't say it where I live because its wrong.

still, I don't meant to call you ignorant. my goal isn't to say I am better than you, but to say please don't think the south is any worse, those days are long past.

[Edited on Jan 07, 2005 5:19PM]

frankenrob

Madison, WI

October 2003

JAN 07, 2005 05:27 PM

I guess I was only reading the artical itself not the editoral. I would agree with you about the location of ignorance thing.

Jena

New York, NY

June 2003

JAN 07, 2005 06:18 PM

i'm sorry but i like how the guy's last name is killen. *runs away*

wolfwood

Madison, WI

March 2003

JAN 07, 2005 06:24 PM

While it's hard to believe that anyone could still be so willfully ignorant and racist, this is the deep south.

Oh, fuck off. There are racist people everywhere. It's not just the South, and there *are* nnon-racist people in the South, believe it or not.

bean

STAFF

Los Angeles, CA

JAN 07, 2005 06:42 PM

jessewestend said:
not ignorant?

While it's hard to believe that anyone could still be so willfully ignorant and racist, this is the deep south.

While I can understand your position, your argument falls short of being convincing. I don't think anyone is denying the fact that racism and prejudice exist everywhere, just that it's not surprising, given the South's contentious history to find old men still clinging to blatantly racist viewpoints long after their time has passed.

For the record, I've never been to the South, but based on the comments of some of those who have lived in both, I don't think the South has tremendously more problems with racism than other places.

I just think you took a bit more offense to what he was saying than was necessary.

katiebarthedoor

Louisville, KY

December 2004

JAN 07, 2005 06:49 PM

wolfwood said:
and there *are* nnon-racist people in the South, believe it or not.

you tell 'em toots!

AkiraLi

Norristown, PA

March 2003

JAN 07, 2005 08:42 PM

wolfwood said:

Oh, fuck off. There are racist people everywhere. It's not just the South, and there *are* nnon-racist people in the South, believe it or not.

jessewestend said:
Do me a favor and don't be so ignorant and blind as to think the south has a monopoly on bigotry and backwards thought.

You're right. Racism does exist in other places in the world, but guess what, it also exists in the Deep South. And in this country no geographical area is aslinked to racism and violent, bigoted behaviour as the Deep South. And for good reason. Sorry, but people aren't gonna forget about the South's legacy of hatred and racism anytime soon. No one is saying that everyone in the South is racist, but places have histories, histories that people aren't quick to forget.