Man pleads not guilty in 1964 race case

[XanaDUer]

JACKSON, Miss. — A reputed Ku Klux Klansman accused in the 1964 slayings of two black men pleaded not guilty Thursday, and in a measure of how things have changed across the South, the judge he stood before was a black woman.

With his wrists and ankles shackled, 71-year-old James Ford Seale repeatedly addressed the judge as "ma'am," a social courtesy whites typically denied to blacks in Mississippi 43 years ago.

Seale was arrested Wednesday on federal charges of kidnapping and conspiracy. Prosecutors said Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both 19, were seized and beaten by Klansmen, then thrown into the Mississippi River to drown.

A second white man long suspected in the attack, reputed KKK member Charles Marcus Edwards, 72, has not been charged. People close to the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity said Edwards was cooperating with authorities...


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4500130.html