Ex-Klansman Convicted of Manslaughter

From the Associated Press:

Forty-one years to the day after three civil rights workers were beaten and shot to death, an 80-year-old former Klu Klux Klansman was found guilty of manslaughter Tuesday in a trial that marked Mississippi's latest attempt to atone for its bloodstained racist past.

The jury of nine whites and three blacks took nearly six hours to clear Edgar Ray Killen of murder but convict him of lesser charges in the 1964 killings that galvanized the struggle for equality and helped bring about passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Civil rights volunteers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner - two white New Yorkers - and James Chaney, a black Mississippian, were intercepted by Klansman in their station wagon on June 21, 1964. Their bodies were found 44 days later buried in an earthen dam, in a case that was dramatized in the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning."

Prosecutors said Killen - a part-time preacher and sawmill operator - organized the carloads of Klansmen who hunted down and killed the three young men.

I'm somewhat torn on this verdict. On the one hand, I am glad that the state has been able to bring to justice at least one person who was guilty of killing these three young civil rights workers. However, I am disgusted that it took over 40 years to convict Killen of manslaughter. If justice is blind, then she's also a slug. Killen's conviction is meaningless. He has lived a long life in freedom, whereas Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were just starting out with their lives. To put Killen in jail now that he's 80 years old, isn't going to do much good--he'll probably die in the next couple of years anyways.

Killen was smart in this instance. He didn't intercept the civil rights workers, beaten them, or pulled the trigger to kill them. He basically planned the whole operation, then stepped back to allow his fellow Klansmen to do the dirty work for him. He was also able to use his cover as a preacher to deflect any suspicion of his involvement in the killings. That's why the federal prosecutors couldn't convict him of violating the victim's civil rights in 1967.

But there's a greater issue here regarding the state of Mississippi. There is over 200 years of state-sponsered slavery and racial segregation within the Deep South. Even now, there is still a sense of prejudice--although it may be deeply submerged. This trial and conviction isn't just about Killen--it is also a trial of the state of Mississippi. It is a trial in the court of public opinion as to whether Mississippi can atone for the racial segregation, the beatings, lynchings and murders at the hands of the Klan--a Klan that included local police and government officials. Can Mississippi and the Deep south atone for all the lynchings and civil rights violations that have occurred since the end of the civil war--especially when Senators can not pass a bill apologizing for those lynchings?

Somehow, I don't think this conviction can do much. And that is sad.