Hi. Yesterday's email on the trial around the murder of 3 civil rights workers in 1964 touched deeply and brought a number of responses, including the two below. They demonstrate not only the disparate country that still exists, but how far the the powerful will go to keep and extend that advantage. If that brings to mind our current state, that's the point, but also remember the monumental changes brought about by the continued mass civil rights struggle and how that impacted an entire era.
Anyway, I'm off to the early DN! shift at kpfk, answering your phone pledges. Lots of people calling, lots more needed and I hope you respond and sustain. 818-985-5735. Say hello if you get me. Ed --- Ed, The story in Mississippi has elements that have been overlooked so far. See below. Pokey Anderson Jerry Mitchell has been a local reporter working on the story for 16 years. Excerpt from his timeline -- what happened after the 3 civil rights workers' station was found burned up, but before the bodies were found (44 days later) under 20 feet of dirt at an earthen dam, buried by a bulldozer that the Klan had arranged before the murders...... (And, if it weren't for a tip, the bodies might never have been found...) The cover up after the 3 young men disappeared was astonishing. Jerry Mitchell 'Mississippi's best hope' - A narrative June 12, 2005 Clarion Ledger [Jackson, MS] http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050612/NEWS010702/50612003&SearchID=73210952250786 excerpts June 23 [1964, two days after the murders] - U.S. Sen. James Eastland suggests to President Johnson the missing men are part of a publicity stunt. "There's not a Ku Klux Klan in that area. There's not a Citizens' Council in that area. There's no organized white man in that area," Eastland says. "Who could possibly harm them?" After the burned out car is found Sen. Eastland tells President Johnson he has new proof the disappearances are a hoax. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover tells the president his agents are chasing down all leads, including that the trio might have burned the station wagon themselves "to create an incident that would inflame the situation." June 25 JACKSON - Gov. Johnson tells reporters for all he knows the missing men are in Cuba. Standing next to Alabama Gov. George Wallace and Jackson Mayor Allen Thompson, he jokes, "Governor Wallace and I are the only two people who know where they are - and we're not telling." The Klan posts fliers all over the Neshoba County Fair: "Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman were not civil-rights workers. They were Communist Revolutionaries, actively working to undermine and destroy Christian Civilization." *** The National Post Monday, June 13, 2005 Capturing a dying breed of Klansman One reporter's work has helped convict now-elderly killers By Sheldon Alberts Jackson, Miss. - The most feared reporter in Mississippi sits in a cramped cubicle on the outer ring of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger newsroom, surrounded by stacks of overflowing file folders, with just enough room to spin around in his chair. Slumping in his seat and talking in a soft southern drawl, Jerry Mitchell has the weary-but-satisfied look of a man nearing the end of a long journey. For 16 years, the mild-mannered journalist has had the old guard of the state's Ku Klux Klan on the run, digging into their pasts and unearthing new evidence in unresolved racial crimes that shocked the United States 40 years ago. His story-to-conviction ratio is impressive. His reporting helped secure guilty verdicts in the murders of Mississippi civil rights activists Medgar Evers and Vernon Dahmer, and in the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama, church that killed four black schoolgirls. Today, one of the biggest Klan trials of them all -- the murder case against Edgar Ray Killen in the 1964 killing of three civil rights workers -- begins in Philadelphia, Miss. With it, Mr. Mitchell is enjoying something akin to a victory lap around the vanquished "klukkers." On a recent afternoon, a German TV crew visited the Clarion-Ledger newsroom for an interview about Mr. Mitchell's investigations. Then came ABC News's Nightline, followed by a Canadian reporter. "I view all these stories as really one big story about the South, not just Mississippi," Mr. Mitchell says. "A tremendous amount has changed down here. I think people see [the 1988 movie] Mississippi Burning and think Mississippi is still like that." With suspects and witnesses dying off, the Killen trial could represent the end of what has become a cottage industry in the South -- belated indictments against ailing, elderly racists. Mr. Killen, an 80-year-old reputed Klan leader, is accused of orchestrating the murders of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, on June 21, 1964. Klansmen in Neshoba Country executed the three civil rights workers after a night-time car chase, then buried them in an earthen dam. Mr. Killen is the first person charged with murder in their deaths. Much credit for reopening the old Klan cases goes to Mississippi district attorneys and a new generation of legislators seeking redemption for the state's segregationist past. But Mr. Mitchell, 46, has been the one constant investigative presence. "None of this would have happened without Jerry Mitchell. He is an example of what a journalistic hero can be," says Richard Molpus, a former Mississippi secretary of state. "He has tirelessly dug up the evidence on all of these cases. Jerry has never claimed credit, but he could. He is humble, with little to be humble about." A native Texan, Mr. Mitchell knew little about the Klan until seeing Mississippi Burning, an account of the murders of the civil rights' activists. Though the film took considerable dramatic licence, it sparked Mr. Mitchell's curiosity about a dark time. "It would be stupid of me to sit here and say that I had this all envisioned and I was going to set out and right all these wrongs," he says. "That's crazy ... I really just fell into it." One of his early scoops was obtaining secret records of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a segregationist agency that until 1977 spied on civil rights activists. The documents showed the commission helped with the defence of Byron de la Beckwith, a Klansman tried unsuccessfully decades earlier in the 1963 shooting of Mr. Evers. Beckwith was retried and convicted in 1994. He died in prison seven years later. Mr. Mitchell's tenacity paid off again in 1999 after interviewing Bobby Frank Cherry, long suspected in the Birmingham church bombing. The reporter uncovered evidence destroying the elderly Klansman's alibi, which helped lead to a conviction in 2002. Cherry, too, died behind bars. His biggest catch, though, was Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers. Tried four times unsuccessfully for the 1966 killing of Mr. Dahmer in Hattiesburg, Miss., Bowers was jailed in 1998 after Mr. Mitchell pursued a tip that the Klan leader had bragged about his involvement. "It always stuck in my craw that people got away with crime, and what crime is worse than murder?" Mr. Mitchell says. "What makes it even more appalling is that everybody knew that they did it. Everybody knew that Byron de la Beckwith killed Medgar Evers. It was not like there was some big mystery." With his reporting came threats. "I had people calling me when I started writing about Medgar Evers, saying 'What are you doing writing about this dead n-word?' " After an interview with Beckwith at his Tennessee home, the Klansman pulled Mr. Mitchell aside. "If you write positive things about white Christians, God will bless you," Beckwith told him. "If you write negative things about white Christians, God will punish you. If God does not punish you directly, several individuals will do it for him." For years, Mr. Mitchell has kept a photograph of Mr. Chaney, Mr. Goodman and Mr. Schwerner on his computer screen. "I had them looking at me to remind me, 'Hey don't forget about us.' " Six years ago, he obtained key evidence that led to several other breaks in the case. In a secret interview Bowers gave to Mississippi archivists, he said he was happy to serve time on federal conspiracy charges in the case because it allowed "the main instigator" of the murders to walk free. This was apparently a reference to Mr. Killen. "I just catch 'em. I don't fry 'em," the journalist says of his role. "I view my job as exposing these guys.... Then whatever happens is what happens." The deeply religious Mr. Mitchell credits his Christian faith for guiding his work. "It is hard to think of being anything other than God's hand, all these things I found," he says. Asked what injustices remain, he mentions the case of Emmitt Till, a 14-year-old black teenager murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after whistling at a white woman. Last month, investigators exhumed the youth's body to perform an autopsy. Mr. Mitchell, too, is still interested in the case. The challenge is "to find somebody alive" to prosecute. "I think [Killen's] trial might be the last one," he says when asked whether more ageing Klansmen might face trial. "It's weird, but I'll be glad when it's over with, just from the standpoint that it has been a long ride." CanWest News Service Final in a two-part series http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/news/observer/story.html?id=479 73097-7db3-44d2-9aed-60235d533a12 http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=17e52490-aa9a -478e-ab09-13fd81db6117 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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