Why you won't see me in Mississippi

Quote of note:

Wilford Barrett, whose barber shop sits across the street from the county courthouse, thinks the 41-year-old slaying of three civil rights workers should stay where it is: in the past. "It's been so long ago," he said. "I wouldn't mess with it."

At Barrett's Barbershop, Kenneth Wells snorts when asked if he believes the preacher is a killer.

"He's a preacher. He wouldn't have done nothing like that. Everybody knows Edgar Ray Killen," said Wells, a 64-year-old lifelong resident of Philadelphia.

According to FBI files and court transcripts, Killen not only participated in the crime, but did most, if not all, of the planning.

Wells is old enough to have been in the crowd himself.

Anyway...

Civil Rights Slayings Divide Miss. Town
Mississippi Town Divided Over Revisiting Past With Ex-Klansman's Arrest in Civil Rights Slayings
The Associated Press

Jan. 8, 2005 - The arrest of former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen in one of the most horrific crimes of the civil rights era was for some a satisfying culmination of a long-delayed hunt for justice. But others here would rather forget the crime, along with the stain of violent racism it left on the town.

Killen, 79, and his wife, Betty Jo, have lived in the same house for 40 years and are familiar figures in the small, rural Mississippi town that became infamous with the 1964 slayings dramatized in the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning."

Posted by Prometheus 6 on January 9, 2005 - 2:51pm :: Justice | Race and Identity
 
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""He's a preacher. He wouldn't have done nothing like that. Everybody knows Edgar Ray Killen," said Wells, a 64-year-old lifelong resident of Philadelphia."

I wonder, but only so very slightly, if Mr. Wells would be willing to grant the same "Get Out of Jail Free Card" to, say, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Rev. Jesse Jackson or even Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr? There are preachers and then there are preachers.

Remember the hulabaloo Nina caused when she dared to sing "Mississippi Goddam"? The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Posted by  PTCruiser on January 9, 2005 - 9:25pm.

Yeah, I can't remove the disdain I feel for Mississippi. And I used to live in AL and GA. It's wrong, but it just seems like a willfully backwards state.

Even in 2005, i think Killen will get no serious judgment. He's an old man and a preacher, after all. Do we need these kinds of gestures? I wonder.

Posted by  Lexi on January 10, 2005 - 3:51am.

Lexi, I don't think we need these gestures.

Posted by  Prometheus 6 on January 10, 2005 - 11:20am.

No, we may not need these gestures (and I am not mollified in the least by Killen's indictment) but the families and friends of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner need something even if it is so slight as an indictment to feel that their sons, brothers and friends did not die in vain. Indicting Killen doesn't remove the fact that the law enforcement officials in Neshoba County were intimately involved in these men's deaths from the beginning to the coverup.

Posted by  PTCruiser on January 10, 2005 - 1:47pm.

I don't mind the indictment in the least. If it helps these folks, cool. In fact, I don't even mind that it's supposed to purge white folks in Mississippi of their guilt like any other sacrifice...IF it meant they would be different in the future.

Posted by  Prometheus 6 on January 10, 2005 - 2:40pm.

White Mississipians will not be different in the future. What tends to ensure black folks in Mississippi a degree of sanctity and a place in the sun at this point is not a change in white Mississipians hearts and minds but a change in the country's laws and the harsh glare of exposure that began with the Civil Rights movement and, believe it or not, the demise of colonial rule. In this brave new world the U.S. government coud no longer sustain its more backward regions' policies against its own native black population while claiming to be the leader of the free world. Now, of course, this didn't prevent this same government from killing more than three million Vietnamese in order to keep them free from communist tyranny but...

Posted by  PTCruiser on January 10, 2005 - 4:11pm.