W/PIC

Slain civil rights workers remembered; testimony to resume in 1964By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUSAssociated Press Writer PHILADELPHIA, Mississippi (AP) – A granite monument outside Mount Zion United Methodist Church sits as a reminder of the sacrifices made by three young civil rights activists killed in the summer of 1964. It reads: “This memorial is prayerfully and proudly dedicated to the memory of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, who gave their life in the struggle to obtain human rights for all people.” Testimony was to resume Monday in the murder trial of Edgar Ray Killen _ the man accused of masterminding the slayings. Defense attorneys planned to call two witnesses to the stand. Killen — an 80-year-old sawmill operator, part-time preacher and one-time local Ku Klux Klan leader — faces the first-ever state murder charges in the June 21, 1964, deaths. He was not scheduled to testify Monday. The three men, who were helping register black voters, had been stopped for speeding, jailed briefly and then released, after which they were ambushed by a gang of Klansmen. They were shot, their bodies found 44 days later buried in an earthen dam in rural Neshoba County. “It’s important that we seek to understand how a government became complicit in terror and how good people looked aside and let it happen,” said Rita Bender, Schwerner’s widow, after a Sunday memorial service at Mount Zion. She said it was important to understand the racial climate in Mississippi in the 1960s because “governments can run amok again.” The victims were investigating a church burning in this small Mississippi town when they were murdered as part of a plot allegedly carried out by the Ku Klux Klan. Klansmen had come to Mount Zion and beaten members of the all-black congregation before setting it ablaze. Joy Porterfield recalled the feeling she had standing over the charred remains of the small wood-frame church 41 years ago. “It was just burnt, burnt to the ground,” she said. Killen’s name has been associated with the 1964 slayings from the outset. FBI records and witnesses indicated he organized carloads of men who followed Chaney, a black man from Mississippi, and Schwerner and Goodman, white men from New York. Their disappearance focused the nation’s attention on the Jim Crow code of segregation in the South and helped spur passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Killen was tried in 1967 along with several others on federal charges of violating the victims’ civil rights. The all-white jury deadlocked in Killen’s case, but seven others were convicted. None served more than six years. Prosecutors wrapped up their case Saturday with testimony from Chaney’s mother, Fannie Lee Chaney. She testified that her son went to join the other two in delivering books. “He never come back,” she said. The defense called four witnesses Saturday _ including Oscar Killen and a sister, Dorothy Dearing, who both testified Killen attended a family Father’s Day meal until late in the afternoon of on June 21, 1964, the day the three civil rights workers were killed. Oscar Kenneth Killen, 74, also testified that his brother never indicated he was in the Ku Klux Klan. “Until he tells me so, I won’t believe it,” he said. The trial recessed for the weekend. Attorney General Jim Hood told reporters that prosecutors would ask the judge to allow the jury to consider a lesser charge of manslaughter in the case. Killen is charged with three counts of murder, which could lead to a life sentence. A manslaughter conviction would carry up to 20 years.