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U.S. civil rights leaders are hailing Tuesday's
guilty verdicts in the case of
three civil rights workers killed in the southern state of Mississippi
back in 1964.
The verdict in the trial of 80-year-old preacher Edgar Ray Killen came
exactly 41 years to the day that the three civil rights workers
disappeared near Philadelphia, Mississippi.
"We the jury find the defendant, Edgar Ray Killen, as to count one, guilty of manslaughter," announced a juror.
The jury found Killen guilty of three counts of manslaughter.
Prosecutor Mark Duncan had hoped for murder convictions, but said the
jury's decision was still significant for the state of Mississippi.
"That it was sanctioned by evil men and that one of them is going to
have to pay for that crime now," he said. "Late, but it is done."
Prosecutors said Killen was a local member of the racist Ku Klux Klan
who organized the seizure and execution-style deaths of civil rights
workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney. Their bodies
were found buried in an earthen dam 44 days later.
The three civil rights workers had been registering black voters around
the time of their deaths and their murders helped to galvanize national interest in the
civil rights movement in the mid-1960s.
James Chaney's brother Ben had hoped for a murder conviction, but he
welcomed the outcome of the trial nonetheless.
"We probably could have gotten more had all the information been
available to be used," he said. "But we will take what we got."
But Michael Schwerner's widow, Rita Bender, was disappointed with the
jury's decision to find Edgar Killen guilty of manslaughter instead of
murder.
"There are still people, unfortunately, among you who choose to look
aside, who choose to not see the truth," she said. "And that means there
is a lot more yet to be done."
Civil rights activists say the Mississippi case and other recent murder
trials in the South stemming from the 1960s are an important part of the
United States coming to grips with its racial past.
Hilary Shelton is with the Washington office of the NAACP (National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People), one of the country's
leading civil rights groups.
"We have such a troubling history in our country of racial
discrimination that also includes violence, maiming and murder," she said. "So
it is important that we continue to remember that murder has no statute of
limitations [no limit on prosecution]."
Former U.N. Ambassador and Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young told NBC
television that the Mississippi case involving the three civil rights
workers is a reminder of the sacrifices made by both blacks and whites
during the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s.
"It was important for Mississippi to do this on their own because it
says how far Mississippi has come [since 1964]," said Andrew Young. "We
had the brightest and best of the youth of America come down and risk
their lives and I think they gave their lives to redeem the soul of
America."
Edgar Ray Killen was one of 18 men who faced federal civil rights
charges in connection with the murders in 1967. Seven men were convicted,
but Killen was freed after the jury in his case deadlocked. | 
