Terror Threats

"This is going to be a whitewash. They are
going to use the most unrepentant racist as the scapegoat, leave the
others alone because they are more powerful, more wealthy and more
influential — and then move on." (Ben Chaney, brother of James Chaney, LA Times)

The news broke last Friday, January 7 that Klansman Ray Killen was arrested on murder charges for the 1964 slayings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi. This is a major step towards justice that will never be adequately served. There were at least nineteen people implicated in the murders. Until last week, no one has ever faced state murder charges or any other state charge. Commenting on the arrest, Rita Bender, widow of Michael Schwerner, said,

In many ways, those men were pawns . . . They were manipulated by a state apparatus that was determined
to preserve a racist society by whatever means. That doesn't mean they
are not individually liable for their acts, but there is a lot more
liability and a lot more responsibility than just them.

And so for me . . . the
importance of this case is to use it to talk about the result of racism
and state-sponsored terror. (emphasis added)

State-sponsored terror. It reaches fully into the present. The terror apparatus is part police and/or FBI and part civilian. Sometimes the civilian and law enforcement terror is coordinated, sometimes not. In the Neshoba County murder case, the three young men were first arrested by Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and his deputy Cecil Price—both Klansmen—and then later released into the hands the other Klansmen who murdered the civil rights workers. Among the civilian Klansmen, were at least two FBI agents, one of whom allegedly fired shots at Chaney.

It is not known whether the three were beaten before they were killed.  Klan informants deny that they were, but there is some physical evidence to the contrary.  What is known is that a twenty-six-year-old dishonorably discharged ex-Marine, Wayne Roberts, was the trigger man, shooting first Schwerner, then Goodman, then Chaney, all at point blank range. (FBI informant James Jordan, according to a second informant present at the killings, Doyle Barnette, also fired two shots at Chaney.)  The bodies of the three civil rights workers were taken to a dam site at the 253-acre Old Jolly Farm.  The farm was owned by Philadelphia businessman Olen Burrage who reportedly had announced at a Klan meeting when the impending arrival in Mississippi of an army of civil rights workers was discussed, "Hell, I've got a dam that'll hold a hundred of them."  The bodies were placed together in a a hollow at the dam site and then covered with tons of dirt by a Caterpillar D-4.

While the bodies were being buried, Price had returned to his duties in Philadelphia.  Around 12:30 A. M., Price met with Sheriff Rainey.  Given their Klan membership and the  close relationship between the two, it is almost imaginable that at that time Price did not relate, in full detail, the events following the release from jail of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney.

At the CORE office in Meridian, meanwhile, staffers were growing increasingly concerned about the long overdue civil rights workers.  Calls inquiring about their whereabouts turned up no helpful information.  At 12:30 A.M., a call was placed to John Doar, the Justice Department's point man in Mississippi.  Less than a week earlier Doar had been in Oxford, Ohio warning Summer Project volunteers that there was "no federal police force" that could protect them from expected trouble in Mississippi.  Doar feared the worst.  By 6:00 A.M., Doar had invested the FBI with the power to investigate a possible violation of federal law. (Source.)

The pervasive reach of the terror mechanisms has a profoundly subduing effect on community members.

For many Americans, the silent complicity of Philadelphia
residents -- many knew the civil rights workers had been killed
while the FBI searched for them -- was almost as shocking as
the crime itself.

Local toughs taunted FBI agents and intimidated
journalists, and a climate of fear in the town insured that
those who spoke out against the murders were quickly silenced.

A white women who lost her Sunday School teaching job when
she criticized the murders compared the climate in the town to
Nazi Germany.

The incidents continue. Some of them get into the news, but to outsiders, catching them on one of the wire services, they seem like isolated incidents. This photo, at right, is outside the Neshoba County, Mississippi courthouse last Friday. The AP caption reads:

Neshoba County circuit judge Marcus Gordon, left, waits outside the
county courthouse as Mississippi Highway Patrol Trooper Eddie Hunt,
background, stands guard as lawmen investigate a bomb threat, Friday,
Jan. 7, 2005 at the courthouse. Moments earlier, Gordon presided at a
hearing where reputed Ku Klux Klan member Edgar Ray Killen was
arraigned on murder charges in the slayings of three civil rights
workers more than 40 years ago. After a thirty minute search, the
building was reopened.

Inside the courtroom, before the bomb scare, along with the judge and the defendant, were members of the African American community like Jewel McDonald (right), whose families were also brutalized by the Klan in 1964.

Jewel McDonald, 58, who is black, remembers the choking fear of that summer, when she was so terrified of arson that she put all her valuables in a cardboard box and stowed it in a chicken coop.

She waited up one night for her mother and brother, who were attending a meeting at Mount Zion Baptist Church, and was horrified to see them return beaten and bloody. They had been attacked by Klan members.

The next day, three young men showed up at her house, inquiring about the beatings. She didn't know their names, but the next night she learned them when reports of the disappearance of three civil rights workers — two white and one black — were on the radio.

"Our mouths flew open, and my mother said, 'Oh, my God,' " McDonald said. "That's when we knew: If they weren't dead now, they would be."

In communities with this kind of history, memory is a potent weapon. I've written previously to argue disenfranchisement of African American voters in Jacksonville, Florida should be seen in the context of that city's little discussed Council of Conservative Citizens and the state's long history of Klan activity, persisting to this day. During the last days of 2004, while I was wrapped up in efforts to block certification of the electoral vote on January 6, I received an email from the Florida NAACP that was a significant addendum to my point.

If you were following actions and protests leading up to January 6, you know that January 3 was a big day: there was an important rally in Columbus, Ohio to demand that all votes be counted, all irregularities investigated, and Ohio's Electors not be seated until we have an accurate final count.  Around the country on the 3rd and on the surrounding days, there were other events in solidarity with Ohio's voters.

On January 1, 2005 there was a big event in Jacksonville, too, but it wasn't about the election. The flier sent by the Florida NAACP read:

March for JUSTICE & PEACE

Florida State Conference NAACPJacksonville Branch NAACPJacksonville Leadership Coalition
OUR FAMILIES AND CHILDREN ARE BEING
KILLED
AT THE HANDS OF POLICE OFFICERS
PLEASE ATTEND OUR

“MARCH ON JACKSONVILLE”
STOP THE KILLINGS!!
Community March and RallySaturday, Jan 1st @ 7:30 a.m.Assemble in front of Bethel Baptist Institutional Church215 Bethel Baptist StreetJacksonville, Florida
We Will March To The Sheriff’s Office(March distance 1.1 Mile)
For further information contact:(321) 279-4807 or (305) 915-4701(Parking will be available)