June 08, 2005 News & Views » From The News Desk

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Justice Waits In Mississippi 

Mississippi's State Road 19 runs southeast from Philadelphia, the county seat of Neshoba County. It's an unremarkable road, and the small store it passes about 8 miles south of Philadelphia is equally unremarkable. But it was at that store in 1964 that three civil rights workers were murdered by Ku Klux Klansmen, who were at that time as common and as corrosive as kudzu in the South.

A few weeks ago, I drove along SR 19, stopped at the food store and turned west along a county road to where the civil rights activists — Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andy Goodman — were buried under tons of soil at an earthen dam. After going a couple of miles along the county road, I turned back toward SR 19. In the few minutes that had passed, a log had fallen across the road. Or had it been placed there as a roadblock?

With me were Gregory Favre, retired editor of the Sacramento Bee (and a son of Mississippi) and Ben Eason, our media group's CEO. Three liberals in a car — and it was three liberals in a car who had been murdered 41 years ago. That fact didn't escape us. We nervously laughed at the tree, as I edged off the road around it, but all three of us were craning our necks looking for guys in sheets.

Although the case inflamed the nation — it's the basis for the movie Mississippi Burning — there's little to mark the incident. Many in the South would like to erase memories of the past.

But racism won't go away. Three crosses were burned last month in Durham. The Republican Party, intoning that race is no longer an issue, pursues policies, such as gutting school funding and programs benefiting the poor, that are inherently racist. "Conservative" media commentators are fluid with code words that may be less offensive than "nigger" but convey the same contempt.

Edgar Ray Killen — a preacher — was tried in 1967 for the Neshoba County murders. Others were convicted, some acquitted. In Killen's case, the jury was hung. Now, after all these years, he's being retried next week.

I'm going to be there. I was a high school student when the 1964 murders occurred. They catalyzed my political consciousness — how could people think that killing someone toiling for liberty is "American"? I've written stories examining race in the South throughout the last 30 years. I'm intrigued by the question of whether there can ever be true race reconciliation. I want to witness this page of history.

So, look for daily reports on www.johnsugg.com.

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