On January 6, 2005, Edgar Ray Killen was arrested and charged with murder in the 1964 Klan slayings of civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. Six months later, on June 21, 2005, Killen was convicted on lesser charges, three counts of manslaughter.
At the time, Killen was one of ten living suspects in the triple murder case (now he's one of nine).
At the time, "The sheriff said there would be more arrests in the notorious case."
The Neshoba County Grand Jury goes on convening, most recently earlier this month, but there has yet to be another suspect charged in the 1964 triple murder case.
Some say we owe the indictment and conviction of Edgar Ray Killen to the Philadelphia Coalition and the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation, and we should therefore look to the Coalition and Institute for leadership in pursuing the other suspects. A handbook on racial reconciliation from the William Winter Institute tells it this way:
From April 5th [2004] through the beginning of the summer, the Coalition met weekly at a local church. Institute staff attended each meeting, helping to facilitate and providing logistical support for the group’s plan both to call for justice in a press conference and to host a public ceremony to honor the three young men. The initial meetings simply but profoundly allowed communities [sic] members to talk about the ë64 [sic] events and their emotions and thoughts surrounding that legacy. Many of these individuals spoke publicly for the first time and it was clear that these residents felt a mixture of guilt, anger, sorrow, and hope. The group committed quickly to issuing a public call for justice in the murders and to meeting with the local prosecutor to encourage pursuing the case. As plans for a press conference in May to publicize the call solidified, Mt. Zion United Methodist Church members asked for assistance at their annual memorial service for the workers and the Coalition decided to add a public call for justice, inviting all interested persons and public officials to lend pressure to their plea....
Coalition members worked with city and county officials to secure unanimous statements calling for justice to support their own call and local businesses, through the Community Development Partnership pledged to help raise support and funding for the upcoming community events.
On June 21, 2004, the fortieth anniversary of the murders, the Coalition hosted a public event in the Neshoba County Coliseum, attended by 1500 people, including the governor of the state of Mississippi and three congressmen.... And, as it had done in a press conference on May 26th, the Coalition again issued a challenge to the state of Mississippi to bring murder charges in the case, as well as an apology to the families of the victims, including Dr. Carolyn Goodman and her son David, who were in attendance.
The evening after the event, Coalition members and their families gathered to reflect on the previous day’s proceedings. Its members committed both to continuing pressure on public officials, with a planned invitation to Attorney General Jim Hood, and to sustaining the work of the coalition through one-on-one conversations with fellow community members, appropriate memorials to the three workers, and an educational initiative, to insure that local schoolchildren would learn of the devastating consequences of racism.
In September 2004, the Coalition hosted a dinner for Dr. Goodman and David Goodman and for Attorney General Jim Hood. The group hoped to “put a human face,” on the tragedy, to underscore for the state’s highest prosecutor the toll these murders had taken on family members as well as the community. The WWIRR continued to attend and support these meetings logistically and also began working with a statewide faith-based group, the Mississippi Religious Leadership Conference, to offer a reward from an anonymous donor for new information leading to the arrest and conviction of persons involved in the murders. That reward of $100,000 became public in December.
On January 6, 2005, the Coalition’s efforts were rewarded. A local grand jury handed down the first murder indictments in the case....
Reading this history, you'd think investigation and indictment of Edgar Ray Killen came about because of the Institute and Coalition meetings with Attorney General Jim Hood. Yet the story of the investigation begins long before the inception of the either the Institute or the Coalition.
Ben Chaney, younger brother of James Chaney, began pushing for a reopening of the Neshoba murders case in 1989, when Mike Moore was the Mississippi Attorney General. Ben Chaney recently recalled:
In 1989 I met with Mike Moore, who was the Mississippi attorney general at the time, and he promised to prosecute the case. He assigned two attorneys in his office to do the research. And they gave him a memo saying he should prosecute. He came back a couple of weeks later saying that there was not enough evidence.
Again, Mike Moore did the same thing in 1994. And he did it again in 1999. But come to find out, he never requested the evidence from the Justice Department. And what's most important, he never requested the informants' files that the Justice Department had.
The case was reopened in 1999 after the Clarion-Ledger's Jerry Mitchell reported on a secret taped interview with former White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard, Sam Bowers. In the interview with Mississippi state archives officials Bowers said:
I was quite delighted to be convicted and have the main instigator of the entire affair walk out of the courtroom a free man. Everybody---including the trial judge and the prosecutors and everybody else---knows that that happened.
With this information now public, a renewed call from Ben Chaney and Rita Bender, Michael Shwerner's widow, for a grand jury inquiry forced the hand of Attorney General Moore.
It might be tempting to say, yes, but Moore dragged his feet on the prosecution while Hood followed through, quite possibly due to the Coalition's pressure. Moore may have been dragging his feet because of further political aspirations that would not withstand any overt offense to Mississippi's racist vote. But Hood took the political handoff, sticking close to Moore's playbook. Hood came out onto the field promising that he would use evidence and accept help from the Justice Department. In the end, Hood punted. He never worked with the Justice Department. He had no intention of carrying the ball beyond the low aim of convicting only Killen.
One also has to wonder why the Winter Institute history of the Edgar Ray Killen prosecution makes no mention of the fifteen years Ben Chaney spent calling for justice before the Philadelphia Coalition ever existed. In the Institute's history, the Institute and the Coalition provided the platform for Andrew Goodman's mother and brother to appeal to Jim Hood; there is no mention of the role of Ben Chaney and Rita Bender in launching the investigation in the first place.
Nor is there any mention of local African American community members in Neshoba County who have been advocating for justice for nearly forty-three years since the triple murders first took place. Why, for example, doesn't the William Winter Institute history mention the Steele family? Cornelius and Mable Steele were James Chaney and Michael Schwerner's key contacts in Neshoba County, having met with the two civil rights workers over thirty times in the months leading up to their murders. Cornelius Steele was one of the main organizers from the very first memorial for Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman in 1964 and was the main organizer from the Mt. Zion Church community in the years that have followed, with Mr. and Mrs. Steele's son John taking over in recent years. John Steele, who was eleven in 1964 and was friends with Chaney and Schwerner, has continued the yearly memorial, even as the Philadelphia Coalition has started its own memorial to co-opt the efforts of Steele and other Movement veterans and their allies. The Philadelphia Coalition website says that group "is charged with ... planning an appropriate public memorial to the civil rights workers in Neshoba County." Charged by whom?
(I must note with sadness the very recent death of Mrs Steele---on January 9. One wonders, too, why the Neshoba Democrat, owned by Philadelphia Coalition Co-Chair James E. Prince III, has not taken the opportunity fulfill the Coalition's broader educational goals by publishing a fulsome obituary of Mrs. Steele, which would convey the important local civil rights legacy in Neshoba County. Prince's paper carried only the minimal AP wire death notice that was world's main notice of this civil rights pioneer's passing.)
On June 21, 2005, the Philadelphia Coalition declared:
Today justice was served. We are satisfied with today’s verdict but justice is still incomplete. Others responsible for this crime must be brought to justice as well. Seeking justice for the brutal murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner was long overdue. But we have only begun our work here.
What, then, has the Philadelphia Coalition been doing? One of the Coalition's most prominent members, Stanley Dearman, was recently raising money to restore and rededicate a statue of a Confederate soldier on the lawn of the Neshoba County Courthouse, where Killen was tried and convicted in 2005.
You don't hear much about the others. Perhaps some of them are working on the Coalition's Civil Rights tourism plan. Some people don't make a call for justice without making sure it's going to make local businesses some money. At the same June 2004 press conference where the Philadelphia Coalition stated, "we are mindful of our responsibility as citizens to call on the authorities to make an effort to work for justice in this case,"
David Vowell, president of the Community Development Partnership, introduced a civil rights tourism initiative....
The cover of a new brochure depicting Neshoba County’s African American and civil rights history was unveiled. The brochure, a project of the Philadelphia-Neshoba County Tourism Council, is entitled “Roots of Struggle, Reward of Sacrifice” and will be available in time for the June commemoration.
"If they can’t be behind the call for justice because it’s the right thing to do---and that’s first and foremost," James E. Prince III has said, "then they need to do it ’cause it’s good for business."
It's forty-two and a half years and counting that some have been waiting for justice to be first and foremost in Neshoba County.
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