Mississippi faces up to its past

A REPUTED Ku Klux Klansman went on trial yesterday accused over the notorious killings of three civil rights workers four decades ago that inspired the film Mississippi Burning.

Defendant Edgar Ray Killen, who has been free on bail, looked straight ahead and said nothing as he was taken into the two-storey, red-brick courthouse in a wheelchair.

Potential jurors, expected to total about 400, were brought to the Neshoba County courthouse on buses and ushered in through a side door.

"This is a sad day for the state of Mississippi, after 40 years of moving forward, going back and opening up an old crime like this," James McIntyre, Killen's lawyer, said yesterday. "The state of Mississippi needs to be going forward, not backwards."

A federal trial was held in the 1960s, but Killen, now 80, a part-time preacher, is the only person ever indicted on murder charges by the state in the case.

Prosecutors have reportedly refused to discuss the evidence that led to the new charges. However, US media suggests the recent appointment of new prosecutors in the state created a momentum for a fresh trial.

Streets near the court in this town of about 7,300 people were barricaded more than an hour before jury selection started. A man who said he was Joseph Harper of Cordele, Georgia, passed around business cards identifying himself as the Imperial Wizard of the American White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

The 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner shocked the nation and drew attention to the struggle to register black voters in the segregated South. The three men had travelled to Mississippi as part of what was known as "Freedom Summer" as young activists from across the country travelled to southern states to lend their aid to the civil rights cause.

Among those at the court yesterday was Mr Chaney's brother, Ben, who has been the most vocal member of the family on seeking justice in the case.

Killen was one of those tried in 1967 on federal charges of violating the victims' civil rights. Killen's case ended in a hung jury, but seven others were convicted. None served more than six years. Killen's trial, before an all-white jury, ended with no conviction even though the jury voted 11-1 to find him guilty. The lone dissenting juror said she could not convict a preacher.

Once the jury is seated, opening arguments could start by tomorrow or Thursday. The trial itself could last two weeks.

Mr McIntyre said before entering the court that it would be extremely difficult to select a jury.

"Everybody in the world has known about this case through the news media, books and hearsay," he said. "There's no place on earth you can go where people haven't heard about this case." But eventually, he said, "I think the jury will acquit him."

A circuit court judge, Marcus Gordon, last week denied a defence motion to delay the trial to give Killen more time to recover from osteoarthritis that was aggravated when both of his legs were broken in a tree-cutting accident in March.

Mr Chaney, a black man from Mississippi, and Mr Schwerner and Mr Goodman, white men from New York, were in a car near Philadelphia, Mississippi, on 21 June, 1964, when they were arrested by police, the FBI says, for speeding.

While they were in Neshoba County jail, prosecutors alleged that a group of Klansmen determined to kill the three men. When they were released, two car loads of Klansmen pursued the activists, forcing them off the road before murdering them.

Mr Chaney was beaten to death while his two companions were shot. Their bodies were eventually found 44 days later, buried in an earthen dam after the FBI and justice department launched their own investigations into the disappearance.