Was justice really served?

“Mississippi Burning” was one of the most critically acclaimed movies of 1988. It received Academy Award nominations for best picture and for Gene Hackman as best actor. The movie takes place in a small town in Mississippi during the height of the African American struggle for voting rights during the 1960s. The screenplay was loosely based on the June 21, 1964, real-life murders of three civil rights workers—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, all in their early 20s—by the Ku Klux Klan near Philadelphia, Miss.

The movie included powerful scenes depicting the racist terror that Black people faced during this historic period—scenes rarely seen by a broad sector of the U.S. population. At the same time, the movie was rightfully criticized for falsely portraying the FBI as heroes during their so-called investigation into the murders.

This falsification was done to cover up the FBI’s notorious Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). Even though the FBI did infiltrate the fascistic, white supremacist group, it also treated the Klan with kid gloves. It was a different story altogether when it came to the leaders of the civil rights and Black liberation movements. COINTELPRO used every dirty trick in the book—including demonization, imprisonment and assassinations—to target leaders that included Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and the Black Panthers.

Now—exactly 41 years later to the day that Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were brutally beaten and executed—KKK member Edgar Ray Killen, 80 years old, was found guilty of manslaughter for the murders. He is the only KKK member ever convicted for these deaths, since the Mississippi courts did not bother to arrest anyone at the time. In 1967, the federal government found seven of the 19 Klan members guilty of conspiracy to commit the murders under a charge of “violation of the civil rights” of the young organizers. Nine of the Klansmen were acquitted, and the trials of Killen and two others ended in hung juries.

Some, including the family members of the murdered men, view the Killen conviction as an important symbolic gesture that justice is finally served. This is certainly understandable. Others are asking why Killen was not found guilty of first-degree murder? The courts say that the passing of time was an important factor. Key witnesses have died and evidence has reportedly disappeared or been destroyed.

But a white juror was quoted regarding the feelings of his fellow jurors, “....if they could just have better evidence in the case that they would have convicted him of murder in a minute. Our consensus was the state did not produce a strong enough case.” (New York Times, June 22)

Ben Chaney, the brother of James Chaney, stated after the Killen verdict that at least nine other bodies were found on Aug. 4, 1964—the bodies of Black men buried in the earthen dam along with the bodies of the civil rights workers. He told the press that their killers should also be brought to justice.

The trial of Killen cannot be separated from the reopening of cases of other murder victims during the civil rights era—so many others, like Medgar Evers, Vernon Dahmer, Emmett Till and the four girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing. Why weren’t their killers brought to justice after these atrocities took place? The federal government, with all of its sophisticated wiretapping and other COINTELPRO-like tactics, knew every step of the KKK and other white supremacists. The federal government was well aware that the Southern courts would not prosecute anyone for these crimes. Instead of intervening in a meaningful way, it used “states’ rights” as an excuse to do nothing but give a slap on the wrist to these lynchers.

Ben Chaney told Workers World in a February 2005 interview that there are people in high governmental positions in Mississippi today who were involved in his brother’s murder and that Killen was an attractive and convenient scapegoat because of his sordid history. To take that point further, individual racists like Killen may have outlived their usefulness, but the U.S. government still depends on the presence of neo-fascist groups like the Klan and Nazis to whip up racist, anti-worker hatred to maintain capitalist rule.