Town bracing for racial killings trial
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.
They disappeared the night of June 21, 1964, when they were run off an isolated road nine miles south of Philadelphia. They were beaten and shot to death and their bodies were found 44 days later, buried in an earthen dam several miles to the west.
The case was symbolized by photos of the burned hulk of the civil rights workers’ station wagon after it was dragged from the swamp where it was ditched after the killings – and of the smirking Klansmen who went on trial in 1967, not on state murder charges but federal charges of violating their civil rights.
Killen, now 80, is the only person ever indicted on murder charges in the notorious case that was depicted in the 1988 movie “Mississippi Burning.” His indictment in January came more than five years after the investigation was reopened. He walked free in 1967 after one juror reportedly said she couldn’t vote to convict a preacher.
Many in Philadelphia, which is 75 percent white and 12 percent black, fear Killen’s trial will attract a circus of racists. At least one Georgia Klansman contacted the sheriff months ago to say he wanted to hold a demonstration.
Resident Joann Johnson, 42, who is black, doesn’t want the trial to stir up bad feelings.
Strolling downtown last week with her daughters, ages 8 and 2, Johnson said Philadelphia has racial problems, but most of the tension is limited to older people. Johnson said one of her closest friends is Killen’s stepdaughter-in-law.
Jury selection for Killen’s trial starts Monday. Summons were issued to more than 400 people. Lawyers say opening arguments could start by Wednesday or Thursday, and the trial could last two weeks.
Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon denied a defense motion to delay the trial to give Killen more time to recover from osteoarthritis that was aggravated when both of his legs were broken in a tree-cutting accident in March.
Whitley said while the killings were wrong, he sees no point in the state prosecuting anyone now, especially an 80-year-old man.
“Just let the issue die,” he said. “They should’ve done it sooner instead of waiting till now.”
But others applaud prosecutors for trying to resolve the murder cases. Some are frustrated that it took four decades to reach this point, and some don’t understand why Killen was the only one indicted.
“If he’s guilty, he didn’t kill those boys by himself. He had help,” said 34-year-old Elizabeth Coburn, who lives just down the street from Mount Nebo Missionary Baptist Church.