My latest is now out in The American Prospect online (free registration required), in many ways a companion piece to my previous blog post.
For the last eight days in Jackson, Mississippi, reputed Ku Klux Klan member James Ford Seale has sat, mostly silent, in the James O. Eastland U.S. Courthouse. Seale has been watching the parade of witnesses take the stand -- his former daughter-in-law, his pastor, a fellow Klansman, FBI agents, a retired Navy diver, an elderly church deacon, a small town newspaper publisher -- to testify about his involvement in the 1964 murders of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, two 19-year-old black men from southwest Mississippi.
The horrific deaths of the two young men, and their families' years of suffering without remediation, illustrate why it is so important for perpetrators to be brought to justice, even decades after the crime was committed. "I've had nightmares every night for 43 years," Charles Moore's older brother Thomas told me in April. The Dee-Moore murders also raise questions about government complicity in Civil Rights era crimes -- and whether case-by-case prosecutions are an adequate response.
Read the rest at TAP.
In doing this article, I had the great honor of interviewing Diane Nash, Ben Chaney, John Steele, John Dorsey Due, Jr., Alvin Sykes, Kenneth O'Reilly and Congressman Kendrick Meek. Stay tuned for some of the outtakes, audio and text. There was some great stuff that was beyond the scope of the article or had to be cut because of space considerations.
UPDATE (via David Ridgen):
James Ford Seale was found GUILTY on all three counts of kidnapping at 6:30 pm (Central Time) this evening. The jury deliberated for under three hours. Sentencing in August. Each count carries a life sentence.
More in the news.
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