JUSTICE

Just at the end of World War II I had my first encounter with a Rebel from the great state of Mississippi. We were in Norfolk, Virginia awaiting reassignment orders by the U. S. Navy when this slow talking young man collared me by my neckerchief and allowed, “Some got dam hog headed Yankee son of a bitch stomped his filthy shoes right smack dabbed square in the middle of my bunk!” He summed the entire situation up perfectly and I took a likin’ to his kind and I am presently living within their midst.

In 1974 my family and I decided to move from Jacksonville, Florida to Moscow, Mississippi a small town a few miles west of De Kalb. I bought a small farm and opened a Western Auto store in Marion just outside of Meridian approximately 30 miles from my home in Kemper County.

I closed my store, sold my farm and returned to Florida in 1978.

During this tenure in Mississippi in the 1970’s I was almost daily reminded of the killing of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner in June of 1964. The continuous ten year story periodically reported by the TV media and the newspapers didn’t make much sense to me and I began to ask questions. Why were these “Yankee” so-called civil rights invaders here by the hundreds in 1964 and why were they treating the average citizen so badly? When talking to the members of the Klan they all, every last one of them, said “We didn’t burn any church, none at all.” The more questions I asked the more I became convinced that this whole story didn’t just happen. I felt that the real truth of these killings left a lot to be explained. I left Mississippi in 1978 with a lot of questions unanswered.

My married son was raising his family in Philadelphia, Mississippi and over the years I visited Mississippi on a regular basis. During these visits, I was able to find the answers to a lot of the questions that had been bugging me for years by talking to friends and acquaintances. Some of them were former Klan members.

I later moved back to Mississippi in 1997.

In 1982 I was managing a Western Auto store in Fork Union near Charlottesville, Virginia, home of the University of Virginia. Charlottesville, so I had been told, had the oldest square dance in existence at that time called “The Virginia Reelers.” About every week my wife and I would go square dancing in Charlottesville with several of our friends and dance with the Virginia Reelers.

It was at one of these dances that I met a fellow, a university professor I am told, that worked for Robert Kennedy as Attorney General. When the professor learned that I had a continuing interest in the 1964 Mississippi killings of the civil rights workers by the Ku Klux Klan he told me a story and later showed me a file that confirmed my theory that these killings didn’t just happen, they were provoked.

According to the professor The Attorney General literally hated Jimmy Hoffa, head of the Teamsters and the Ku Klux Klan since their attack on the Freedom Riders in May of 1961and their continued interference with the five hundred federal marshals the president sent to the southern states shortly thereafter.

On several occasions he told the closest members of his staff, as attorney general, he would see that both of them would be destroyed.

You all know what happened to Jimmy Hoffa. One day he just disappeared and has never been seen again!

Of course The Attorney General is head honcho of the FBI and according to the professor his plan to take care of the Klan was his and his alone once he got his brothers approval. The Kennedy administration authorized hundreds of civil rights special volunteers under the guise of checking certain Mississippi citizens of their right to vote. These special volunteers were under the protection of the FBI agents, underlings of the Attorney General. Their primary purpose, especially within Lauderdale, Kemper and Neshoba counties was to rile the local Klan members to the point that the Klan members would perform such a dastardly act or acts that the administration would be able to shut them down. Salaries and expenses of these special volunteers were handled within governmental and outside agencies such as CORE, SNCC, and NAACP. I call those years The Kennedy Civil Rights Administration.

This was confirmed by the file I was permitted to read. The professor refused to make a copy.

So, now I can tell my complete story; the true story, as well as I can figure it out, gleaned from a collection of numerous conversations and interviews over a period of some thirty odd years. I tend to believe my continuing quest for the cause of these killings was simply because the TV media and the newspapers have been caught up into the actual event and never realized this epic crime had a causative nature.

In the early 1960’s Martin Luther King was on a roll with his civil rights movement. His non-violent protests and political tactics were much admired by most sane persons, both black and white throughout this land. That is how it should have been but it definitely got out of hand.

Then along comes President John F. Kennedy definitely lacking the vision of a Martin Luther King and decided to give him a hand in the struggle for civil rights. After swearing to uphold the laws of the United States of America and then savoring the flavor of his inaugural address the President decided to actively support King. He decided the best thing he could for his country was to aid and abet in the breakdown of local law and order as was the case in St. Augustine, Florida. I was there. He actually, while President of the United States of America, sent his personal plane filled with protesters to harass, flaunt and break existing laws of the city, county and state. Why he was never impeached is beyond me!

President Kennedy along with his Attorney General, Robert Kennedy decided to get rid of the Ku Klux Klan once and for all. That is when they cooked up a hair brained scheme of gathering together a group of several hundred hotheaded and irresponsible young people, bankrolling them with federal funds and then turning them loose in and around Lauderdale, Kemper and Neshoba counties in east central Mississippi. The purpose of this illegal and abusive tactics was to entice the Klan to commit a dastardly deed so vile and so violent that it would give the federal government a reason to destroy them as a potent adversary to the civil rights movement prevalent in our culture at that time and place. This was entirely different than the usual civil rights tactics used by this administration.

In the meantime, Lee Harvey Oswald apparently assassinated John F. Kennedy. Personally, I am unable to dispel the thoughts that keep going through my mind as what role LBJ played in the conspiracy theories about Kennedy’s death that keep cropping up!

Immediately, President Johnson took to this half-baked plan his predecessor had cooked up, like scrambled gets with eggs.

The invasion of hundreds of these uninformed, undisciplined, irresponsible and downright arrogant Yankee crusaders in a very short period of time broke more of the civil rights of the good white people of eastern central Mississippi than the Klan had violated in its entire history. As a government enterprise it can be compared with that of Mao Tse Tung when he turned the communist youth loose upon the people of China. Before it was over every last white person in Neshoba County was forced by a misinformed public to carry blame for both the sins of the federal government and the Ku Klux Klan!

To this date, right up to this very minute, the national TV news media and the national newspaper press have failed to inform this nation the truth about innocent white people caught up into the stupidity of a presidential sting operation. It has taken me over thirty years to finally understand what these people went through with; mainly as a result of the abuses created by the government of a supposedly free society. My neighbors know what it is like to be under a reign of terror by an unbridled and unfriendly arm of your own government when the rule of law becomes a joke at their expense, notwithstanding the fear and sins of a few people misguided by the Klan.

The presidential sting was apparently successful in as much as it culminated in the killings of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner on June 21, 1964. The federal government claims they were murdered by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Their bodies were found in an earthen dam some 44 days later. In 1967 the federal government brought charges of conspiracy to violate the civil rights of these men.

Seven members of the Klan were convicted in October that year and spent considerable time in prison.

In a free society, one set of rules is supposed to be applicable to all. The civil rights of the three unfortunate individuals that were lured to their death by presidential fiat were definitely violated by members of the Ku Klux Klan and proven in a court of law. What about the civil rights of most of the white people in the eastern portion of central Mississippi that were trampled on by the Yankee invaders aided and abetted by the FBI and other government employees before, during and after their death?

My neighbors are reluctant to talk about this reign of terror visited upon them by their own government. I have been putting together bits and pieces of this story over the last thirty odd years and I challenge our federal government, the national TV media and national newspaper press to tell us the truth.

Forty-one years later Edgar Ray Killen became the first man to be convicted on state charges related to the killings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner on June 21, 1964. He is now in prison serving a total term of sixty year.

On Saturday March 29, 2008 it was reported that the multi-racial Philadelphia Coalition called on authorities to ask again that the FBI reopen the 1964 killings of these three civil rights workers!

Are they truly seeking justice or is this a form of protracted revenge?

Is it time for the people of Neshoba County to overcome this continuous plague of guilt that has confronted and confused our citizens for over forty years?

Is it time to tell the whole wide world that when certain immoral and unethical entities like the Klan and elements of our federal government conspire to destroy each other, the innocent always suffer the most?

The following words are from Romans 12:19-21. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.