Editorial: Rights came at high price

Friday, June 24, 2005 | 9:11 a.m.

No one who lived through the civil rights movement, or who has studied its history, will ever forget what happened June 21, 1964, in Neshoba County, Miss. Three young civil rights workers -- part of a nationally organized volunteer campaign to combat racism in the state -- had visited a burned-out church that day and had talked with members of its black congregation. Church burnings were among many acts of terrorism used by the Ku Klux Klan against black people. The terrorism was picking up that year, in response to black people organizing to end decades of violence against them and to end the state-sanctioned segregation keeping them down.

Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were chased down by Klansmen that night as they drove out of town. They were shot and an earth mover was used to bury their bodies. While the killings were pivotal, spurring a civil rights movement that hastened the end of segregation and eventually ensured federal and state protections for minorities, no one was ever charged with murder in the crime. Eight men were tried on charges that they deprived the three slain men of their civil rights. Seven were convicted and served sentences of six years or less. Because the jury couldn't reach a unanimous decision on the case involving the eighth man, he went free.

That man was Edgar Ray Killen, who this week, 41 years to the day after the killings, was convicted of manslaughter in a Mississippi state court and sentenced to 60 years in prison. The jury found enough evidence to convict Killen of planning the abduction of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, and recruiting the Klansmen who carried out the plan. Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon, who presided over Killen's trial, said after the verdict: "The three gentlemen who were killed ... each life had value, and each life is as valuable as the other life."

Words cannot right a wrong, but they can provide meaning and solace. What this case leaves us with are memories of the terrible killings 41 years ago of a black man and two white men, a delayed but just conviction this week, and a Mississippi judge's words affirming the purpose of the civil rights movement -- respect and equal rights for all.