Mississippi is no longer burning but the flame of racism continues to flicker throughout the nation.\nMore than four decades after civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were beaten and shot to death by Ku Klux Klan members in Neshoba County, Ala., 80-year-old and former Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was sentenced to 60 years in prison Thursday for commanding the 1964 slayings. Killen faced a maximum of 20 years for each count of manslaughter, and Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon said Killen's terms will run consecutively.\n"There are those of you in the courtroom that would say a sentence of 10 years would be a life sentence," Gordon said, as reported by the Associated Press. "Each life has a value. Each life is equally as valuable as the other life and I have taken that into consideration. The three lives should absolutely be respected and treated equally."
REBEL JUSTICE\nKillen's conviction Tuesday, 41 years to the day of the murders, concludes a half-century long civil rights drama that resulted in the federal incarceration of seven other Klansmen in 1967 for violating the victims' civil rights and the 1988 fictionalized film "Mississippi Burning." An all-white jury could not agree about Killen's guilt in the 1967 trial -- he is a part-time minister for the Baptist faith. \n"The plot was executed with a degree of self possession and steadiness equal to the wickedness to with which it was planned ... Such a secret could be safe nowhere, there is no nook nor corner on this earth where a secret of this plot would remain safe," said Federal Prosecutor John Doar in his closing argument of the 1967 trial. " ... Everything indicated that there had been a conspiracy to kill and that the killers had the help of the law. We know this was not done without the help of a plan."\nChaney, a black Mississippian, and white New Yorkers Schwerner and Goodman were abducted the evening of June 21 and murdered about 12:45 a.m. June 22 by members of the White Knights of the KKK after they were released from the Neshoba County jail for a speeding violation. Their scorched car was found sometime later and the three bodies were discovered Aug. 4 buried under about 15 feet of Mississippi red clay. \nAll three civil rights workers had traveled to Neshoba County to investigate the firebombing of Mt. Zion Church -- one of about 20 black churches torched in Mississippi by members of the Klan that summer. Their murder sparked President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, and the 1967 trial of Killen and his minions occurred only after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated federal indictments against the alleged 19 co-conspirators. \n"Times have changed. America has changed. Americans have changed," said James Madison, an IU history professor. "Core American principles are -- ring the bells -- liberty and justice for all. Do we all believe in liberty and justice for all? No, but more of us do and more of us act like we do."
HOOSIER \nLYNCHING TREE\nSome form of racism, segregation and hate crime occurred in all 50 states of the union at the end of the 19th Century through the mid-20th Century and continues today. Post-Civil War reconstruction often involved local-perceived "lynch laws," especially for communities located south of the Mason-Dixon line, as a method of white-community social control over otherwise freed black people. \n"Ignorance and racism sleep in the same bed," said Madison, author of "A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America," which documents the 1930 lynching of three black teenagers by the hands of a white Marion, Ind., mob. "Lynching was almost a daily occurrence in America -- it is not an aberration, it is part of American history."\nMore than 4,700 U.S. lynches were documented between 1882 and 1968, according to the Tuskegee Institute, including 47 reported lynches within Hoosier communities -- although 33 of the victims were white. The national average, however, speaks to the social reality that about two of every three lynch victims were black people. Five hundred eighty-one lynches were reported in Mississippi -- 539 involving blacks -- followed by Georgia with 531 -- 492 involving black people -- and Texas with 493 -- 352 involving freed blacks. \nIn the 1930 Marion, Ind., lynching spectacle, black teenagers Thomas Shipp, Abram Smith and James Cameron were dragged from their jail cells by a white mob, beaten and hung from the town "lynching tree." The three Hoosiers were accused of murdering of a white man and raping his white girlfriend after pulling them from a parked car. \nCameron's life was spared after a rope had been placed around his neck. He is the only known survivor of a U.S. lynching.\nMadison said two aspects of lynching seemed to prevail during the late 19th Century well into the 20th Century. First, in the 1930 Marion case, two teenagers were murdered by a mob with no trial, no jury and no legal apparatus whatsoever. Second, community legal methods or means never accounted for those crimes, he said -- "no one to this day has been punished." \n"It's not just that a white mob lynched two black guys. The system failed and justice was never served. It's too late in Marion," Madison said. "It's almost certain that everyone involved is no longer living ... It's hard for younger Americans today to realize how bad life was for African Americans in the 1930s." \nMadison said the 1930 human climate within the IU campus community involved segregation: black Americans could not live in the same dorms as their white peers, they were not allowed to purchase a Coke in the Indiana Memorial Union, they were banned from swimming in the University's swimming pool and they couldn't find a downtown barber willing to cut their hair. \n"My hope always comes back to American ideals: equality and justice for all. From the very beginning Americans have always said that, but the question is whether we will have the will to live up to those ideals," Madison said. "The Marion lynches were an aesthetic execution -- this was violence and hatred and brutality. They were beaten bloody with fists and shoes. One woman even stomped on one of their faces. They were spit on, hit with crowbars and one of them was dead before they got him to the lynching tree."
AMERICAN EQUALITY\nFour centuries after Africans were forced into American slavery, about 80 out of 100 U.S. senators signed on as co-sponsors of a bill but only a handful showed their faces to the families of lynching victims. Senate Resolution 39, a legislated apology to the victims of lynching and the descendants of those victims for the failure of elected public officials to enact anti-lynching legislation, was passed the night of June 13, with few Senator's around to speak to an audience of lynching victim's families and the sole survivor Cameron. Most of the 20 senators who didn't sign on were from the south.\n"This is something that been a long time coming. It's a shame it took this long for this type of legislation to come about," said William Vance, Jr., president of the Monroe County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "It does seem like we have come a long way, but there are still hints of racism that rear their head in more subtle ways -- embedded in the bureaucracy."\nTwo hundred anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress during the first half of the 20th Century, according to data within S.R. 39. The House of Representatives passed three anti-lynching measures and seven presidents petitioned Congress to end lynching. \nS.R. 39 does not offer a legislated apology for the Constitutional reference of black Americans as symbolizing three-fifths a person for voting purposes. According to data obtained from the 2005 S.R. 44: 61 percent of black fourth graders read at or below basic level, 50 percent of all new HIV cases are reported in blacks, 16 percent of native-born black Americans have earned a Bachelor's degree and the leading cause of death for black males ages 15 to 34 is homicide. \n"You don't have lynching anymore -- the blatant racism. A lot of black Americans cannot afford health care so they are hesitant to seek help for early symptoms," Vance said. "On your job, you may have an employer who has already said he wants to hire a particular kind of individual and that person may not be black ... There have been cases in Bloomington schools where we have questioned why students of color receive more expulsions than their white peers with respect to the school race demographics as a reference point."\nVance said he thinks black Americans should continue to try to help themselves first and foremost. Although America is experiencing a period of regeneration, he said, Americans should not grow tired of making an effort to strive for equality and learn from the lessons of history.\nMadison said all Americans should continue to work for liberty and justice. \n"As an American I'm very pleased my Senate apologized and I'm pleased that the system of justice in Mississippi has finally worked. You are not guaranteed anything," he said. "This country doesn't give it to you -- you have to work for it, including your basic rights because there are always people willing to take your rights away ... A mob is a beast with many hands and no brains. People did things that night in Marion I'm sure they regretted for the rest of their lives"
