Two years ago this week, I sat in a courtroom in Philadelphia, Miss., watching the trial of Edgar Ray Killen, an ordained Baptist preacher and, more to the point, a Ku Klux Klansman who was the mastermind of the June 21, 1964, murders of three civil rights workers. It was the story that was made famous (albeit with some unnecessary embellishments) in the movie Mississippi Burning.
Killen was convicted, and received a triple dose of 20-year sentences. With any luck — and if there is justice in the universe — he’ll rot in jail until he dies. The injustice is that Killen walked free for four decades. Michael “Mickey” Schwerner, Andrew “Andy” Goodman and James “J.E.” Chaney, who toiled for the cause of freedom, were young men when Killen and the subhuman Klan contingent killed them.
(My final story on Killen is here. And my blogs and on-the-scene reports are here.)
They say justice delayed isn’t justice. There were almost 5,000 lynchings during the Jim Crow and Civil Rights years. Most of them went unpunished. But there are still men like Killen alive. Atlanta Congressman John Lewis, along with bipartisan co-sponsors, was successful today in having the House pass what’s dubbed “The Emmett Till Bill.”
Emmett Till was a 14-year-old boy viciously mutilated, tortured and murdered in Mississippi in 1955. His mother chose to have an open casket funeral for her child in Chicago — and the nation recoiled at the horror of racism that thrived in the South. Till’s death helped launch the Civil Rights era.
Lewis’ bill — which the Senate is expected to pass shortly — authorizes funding for sections of the Justice Department and the FBI to pursue these cases and to assist local jurisdiction in the prosecution of some of these murders.
There were only two votes in the House against the legislation. One of those was a Georgia neo-Confederate, Lynn Westmoreland, R-Whatswrongwithlynching.
Lewis, one of the last of the Civil Rights giants, made these remarks today on the House floor:
Madam Speaker, I am so pleased the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act is being considered today before the full House of Representatives.
I would like to thank the lead cosponsors of this bill, Rep. Kenny Hulshof from Missouri and my good friends, Senators Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Patrick Leahy of Vermont for their distinguished support in this effort.
I would also like to thank Chairman Conyers of the Judiciary Committee and Subcommittee Chairs Scott and Nadler for coordinating a powerful hearing on this legislation. Madam Speaker, the time has come. For the sake of history, for the sake of justice, for the sake of closure–the 110th Congress must pass this legislation.
On August 28, 1955, almost 52 years ago, a fourteen year old boy from Chicago was visiting his uncle in Money, Mississippi. He was pulled from his bed in the darkness of night. He was beaten until he could hardly be recognized. He was shot in the head, and his body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River, all because somebody said he had been fresh with a white woman.
Several years later an intelligent and dignified N-A-A-C-P leader, named Medgar Evers, was gunned down in front of his home in Mississippi in 1963. Some historians say it was the injustice of these two unsolved murders that began the mass movement in the American South that we call the modern-day civil rights movement.
Who can forget the NAACP leader and his wife, Harry and Harriette Moore, who were killed by a bomb on Christmas night as they celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in 1951?
Who can forget the two black couples lynched about 60 miles east of Atlanta in 1946 or the death of Lemuel Penn, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve? He was a veteran trying to get home from Fort Benning, Georgia for a little rest and relaxation. He was killed in 1964 as members of the KKK drove-by him on the street.
Who can forget Viola Liuzzo, shot down in Alabama in 1965, trying to bring non-violent activists back to their homes after the Selma to Montgomery march?
There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of these crimes that were never brought to justice. There are murderers who have walked free for decades while the families of victims cry out for justice. Passing this bill is the least we can do. And we must do something to right these wrongs.
I will never forget three civil rights workers. Three young men that I knew—Andy Goodman, Ben Chaney and Mickey Schwerner. They came to Mississippi with a simple mission: to register as many black voters as possible. They were stopped, arrested, taken to jail.
Later that night they were turned over by the sheriff to the Klan. Then they were beaten, shot, and killed. They didn’t die in Vietnam or Eastern Europe. They died right here in the United States. Viola Liuzzo didn’t die on a road in Baghdad. She died in Alabama on Highway 80. Lemuel Penn, Medgar Evers, Emmett Till and countless others didn’t die in the Middle East. They died right here in this country.
Madam Speaker, we have an obligation, we have a mission, we have a mandate. The blood of hundreds of innocent men and women is calling out to us. Then no one came to their aid. But today we can help make it right. Let us move to close this dark chapter in our history. Let us try to wash away these stains on our democracy. I call on all my colleagues to pass this legislation. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Imagine that. Somewhere in the legislative process, a piece of chest-thumping Dixieland legislation about the Civil War morphed into — a bill about Civil Rights?
