Accessories Before The Fact

In my last post, the Arkansas Delta Peace And Justice Center noted that under Mississippi law

every person who knew a decision had been made and/or a plan had been developed to murder Michael Schwerner is as criminally complicit as the one(s) who actually fired the shot(s).

Anyone following the Edgar Ray Killen trial might notice mentions of some of the many persons who are criminally complicit in this way. Just the other day, when the Clarion Ledger reported on Attorney General Jim Hood's response to Killen's release on appeal bond (via the Arkansas Delta Peace And Justice Center), Jerry Mitchell noted that

Five days before the killings, former Klansman Delmar Dennis testified in a 1967 federal conspiracy trial, Killen led a gathering of more than 75 Klansmen in Neshoba County. "Edgar Ray Killen asked for volunteers" to go to the all-black Mount Zion church because civil rights workers might be there, Dennis testified. Klansmen returned with bloody knuckles, he said.

In June, shortly before the 2005 trial, Mitchell summarized Dennis' testimony in more detail:

Killen swore him into the Klan in March 1964 at Cash Salvage Store in Meridian, testified Dennis, a Klansman-turned-FBI informant. "He said there would be things that the Klan would need to do and would do and among those would be the burning crosses, people would need to be beaten and occasionally there would have to be elimination."

"What did he mean by elimination?" asked John Doar, the former Justice Department official who prosecuted the case with U.S. Attorney Robert Hauberg.

"He meant killing a person. He explained that any project that was carried out by the Klan had to be approved by the Klan."

Dennis said elimination "had to be approved by the state." By the state, he explained, he meant Sam Bowers.

In Klan meetings twice in the spring of 1964, Schwerner's name arose with Klansmen saying they wanted to eliminate him, Dennis testified.

He testified Killen, who was running the meeting, said that project "had already been approved by the state officers of the Klan and had been made a part of their program."

At a June 16 Klan meeting, Killen called to order the more than 75 Klansmen gathered, Dennis said.

When one mentioned seeing a heavily guarded meeting at the all-black Mount Zion church, "Killen asked if the group thought that anything should be done about it, and some person in the group suggested that there probably were civil rights workers in the church or it would not have been heavily guarded, and it was agreed that something would be done," Dennis testified. "Edgar Ray Killen asked for volunteers."

The armed group returned an hour later, Dennis said. "Wayne Roberts had blood on his hands or knuckles, and he told me he got this when he was beating a n-----."

Dennis said Bowers said Judge Cox "would probably make them take those bodies back and put them where they got them, that they had found the bodies on an illegal search warrant. ... On another occasion shortly after that meeting he said that he was pleased with that job that it was the first time that Christians had planned and carried out the execution of Jews." (Emphasis added.)

You can read the full transcript of the 1967 Delmar Dennis testimony here.

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Photo

James E. Jordan (right) and the Rev. Delmar Dennis (left) leave the federal court in Meridian under heavy guard Oct. 13, 1967, after testifying in the trial of 18 white men charged with conspiracy in the deaths of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. Jordan and Dennis both testified against other fellow Klansmen in the trial that ended with seven convictions. (Clarion Ledger File Photo/The Associated Press)