Mississippians Wary of Civil-Rights Trial

[Selatius]

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. - Hicks. Rednecks. Racists. People who live in this town of 7,300 have heard the epithets slung their way for decades.

And many — black and white — cringe as they anticipate how the world will view their town when reputed Ku Klux Klansman and part-time preacher Edgar Ray Killen goes on trial Monday in the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers.

"People make it sound like it's a hick town. It's not," said Bryon Whitley, a white 21-year-old who works in a music store on the downtown square, just across from the red brick Neshoba County Courthouse.

The murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner helped focus the nation's attention on the struggle to register black voters in the segregated South. Chaney was a black Mississippian. Goodman and Schwerner were white Northerners.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=519&e=4&u=/ap/20050611/ap_on_re_us/civil_rights_killings

[Endangered Specie]

1. Justice: better late than never.

[Guaranteed]

2. My dad went down there about the same time as these three guys

were killed. They were working for voting rights and got pulled over by a cop in the middle of the night. They had a black man with them in the car. The officer told them to get out of the state within 24 hours (I actually think this was in Alabama).

[TacticalPeek]

3. Dave Dennis' remarks at James Chaney's funeral always apply.

"But what I want to talk about right now is the living death - that
we have right among our midst, not only in the state of Mississippi, but throughout the nation.

Those are the people who don't care.

Those who do care, but don't have the guts enough to stand up for it.

And those people who are busy up in Washington and other places, using my freedom, and my life, to play politics with."


David Dennis, at James Chaney's funeral.

[Maddy McCall]

4. No, Mississippians WANT this trial. Zogby poll: 83% approve of the trial.

[Melodybe]

10. No shit, thanks for saying that Maddy

We have been branded by Mississippi Burning for far too long. Yes there are still some idiots but they represent such a small % of the population. In 20 years the south has come so far with racial relations and we never get any credit for it.

I bet you find more black/white relationships, friendships, etc in the south than anywhere else in the country.

Thanks for speaking up for us Maddie.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

12. My mom

went to high school in Oxford in the early 70's and said race relations back then were horrible and there was a very defined color line in every aspect of life. Well, she returned last year for her 30 year reunion and couldn't believe how much things had changed there. Blacks and whites were mingling and partying together and there didn't seem to be a color line like there once was.

[Bake]

15. Mississippians want to see justice done!

Thanks, Maddy.

What we're worried about is the inevitable stereotyping of our state as a bunch of redneck racists (in other words, typical red state).

I'm in Jackson, MS, and I can tell you that while we still have our problems, we've come a LONG LONG WAY in the area of race relations. I moved here two years ago and was very pleasantly surprised by what I found.

Bake

[newswolf56]

5. Note the "Klansman...preacher" label and understand...

...the real reason we should all be absolutely terrified of the Fundamentalist/Republican connection, whether Dominionist or not.

Having grown up mostly in the South (though surely not as a Southerner), I am all too well aware of the connection between Fundamentalism and tyranny. In the years of my boyhood and young adulthood -- the 1940s, 1950s and the 1960s -- Klan activities were often referred to as "the Saturday Night Men's Bible Study." And everywhere throughout the South, Fundamentalist preachers -- Klan-connected or not -- railed against unionism and union organizers.

In other words, Christian Fundamentalism was the ideological glue that facilitated all sorts of socioeconomic tyranny, even long before the advent of the overt Christofascism called Dominionism. Thus what Bush is doing with his GOP/Dominionist alliance is resurrecting Fundamentalism's ancient function as the plutocracy's brain police -- an old grim story that with its ugly new twist is all the more horrific in its Orwellian implications.

[kweerwolf]

6. I remember my grandfather who was at one time in the Klan ...

... quoting scripture to justify slavery and segregation. He'd cite the story of Noah and how one of his three sons (the progenitor of the "knee-grow race," he claimed) was cursed to live in servitude to his brothers.

It never ceases to amaze me how some "christians" (lower case "c" intentional to differentiate them from Christians) can pick and choose verses here and there to justify their prejudices and bigotry.

[MountainLaurel]

7. Spot on, newswolf

You only have to look at Tony Perkins' (from the Family Research Council fundie organization) purchase of David Dukes' mailing list of supporters to see that these two groups -- white supremacists and Christian fundamentalists -- go hand in hand.

[AX10]

8. Thanks for this info. It appears that what is occuring today....

is nothing new.

[Voltaire99]

13. Superb post. (nt)

[annabanana]

9. They should be delighted at the opportunity..

to save their town's reputation. They can show America how much has changed and that they are eager to see Justice served. They should embrace this trial.

[Maddy McCall]

11. Maybe the rest of America should follow Mississippi's lead.

[annabanana]

14. oh yeah.. (a little soul searching is a good thing)..n/t

[Bake]

16. Amen! And look at another example too

The conviction, years later, of Byron De La Beckwith (De LAY???) for the murder of Medgar Evers.

Bake

[TacticalPeek]

17. And another.

Sam Bowers, klucker, going to prison for life for the murder of Vernon Dahmer Sr. in 1966.

Three decades is too long to have waited, but better late than never.

http://stop-the-hate.org/dahmer.html