Apologies are the precursors to forgiveness, to healing. They’re necessary to put bitterness behind us and let us move on with our lives. This came to mind when I heard the news that more evidence had been uncovered in three of the most infamous unsolved civil rights murders.
In 1964, civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were working to register black voters in Mississippi when they were abducted by Klan members near the town of Philadelphia. All three were shot to death, then buried to hide the crimes. Chaney, the only black man in the group, was also severely beaten.
Now, a December series of newspaper articles in The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., has uncovered witnesses and evidence that could lead to new charges. Previously sealed FBI documents show that one vote kept a man from facing charges two years ago when a grand jury re-examined the case. One vote of innocence came from the man’s relative — clearly a violation of justice.
The last time new evidence in this case was uncovered, a then 80-year-old former Klansman was convicted. Stooped, on oxygen and confined to a wheelchair during much of the 2005 proceedings, Edgar Ray Killen was sentenced to 60 years for manslaughter.
Then, as now, the attention brings familiar refrains: Quit stirring up racial trouble. Let the past go. The murders are in the past, and that is where they should remain.
To those thoughts I say: Murder has no statute of limitations for good reason.
Pursuing these unsolved cases is present society’s way of finally saying, “I’m sorry.”
Sorry for systems that had sheriffs protecting the criminals in these cases, not the victims. Sorry for societal codes that kept white people silent for the sake of their own family’s safety. Sorry for the inability of people today to grasp that unaddressed crimes leave scars that last generations beyond the dates on a murder victim’s autopsy report.
After the conviction of Killen, the Klansman who orchestrated and gathered the mob to carry out the three murders, the mother of the black victim said the jury’s decision finally made her believe that the life of her 21-year-old son had some value to the people in the Mississippi community where he was murdered.
That is a hell of a thing for a mother to wait more than 40 years for.
A bill now pending in Congress would put federal resources behind such investigations. Dubbed the Till bill, after another well-known victim of racist murder, Senate Bill 535 would create a cold case unit within the Justice Department dedicated to solving civil rights era murders.
Last year, the nation’s more than 50 FBI field offices began searching for possible cases to consider, in anticipation of the bill’s eventual passage. More than 100 unsolved cases have been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center. About a dozen of those cases are already believed to hold enough evidence for prosecution.
But we don’t have much time left to see that justice is served. Witnesses and suspects are dying off. Memories are fading.
Some, of course, suggest that the passage of time is a reason not to pursue these cases. In the many online comments readers posted about the Clarion-Ledger series, one typical argument was that people needed to quit “living in the ’60s” and focus instead on the ills black people visit on each other today.
I would be among the first to encourage people to quit whining and seize the day, to look for opportunities and to cease labeling every slight as racial. But I’m also aware that many people cannot adopt this view of life due to attitudes that have been passed to them. People carry scars, from generation to generation.
And violence typical of the civil rights era does not rest easily. It takes a bit from everyone — from the souls of those who lost loved ones, and from those who watched or shrugged when they heard the news, or who perhaps were horrified at the violence but were too intimidated to speak.
And so it is imperative for the government to follow every lead until it runs out. Not just for the peace of the victims and their families, but also for the betterment of the nation. Without it, we all remain a little shackled, unable to ever “get over” the past.
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