The slaying of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia,
Mississippi, in 1964 was a notorious event documented in Howard
Ball's 2004 book Murder in Mississippi. Now Ball revisits that
grisly crime to tell how, four decades later, justice finally came
to Philadelphia.
Originally tried in 1967, Baptist minister and Klansman Edgar
Ray Killen was set free because one juror couldn't bring herself to
convict a preacher. Now Ball tells how progressive-minded state
officials finally re-opened the case and, forty years after the
fact, enabled Mississippians to reconcile with their tragic
past.
The second trial of 80-year-old "Preacher" Killen, who was
convicted by a unanimous jury, took place in June 2005, with the
verdict delivered on the forty-first anniversary of the crime.
Ball, himself a former civil rights activist, attended the trial
and interviewed most of the participants, as well as local citizens
and journalists covering the proceedings.
Ball retraces the cycle of events that led to the resurrection
of this "cold case," from the attention generated by the film
Mississippi Burning to a new state attorney general's quest for
closure. He reviews the strategies of the prosecution and defense
and examines the evidence introduced at the trial-as well as
evidence that could not be presented-and also relates first-hand
accounts of the proceedings, including his unnerving staring
contest with Killen himself from only ten feet away.
Ball explores the legal, social, political, and pseudo-religious
roots of the crime, including the culture of impunity that shielded
from prosecution whites who killed blacks or "outside agitators."
He also assesses the transformation in Mississippi's life and
politics that allowed such a case to be tried after so long.
Indeed, the trial itself was a major catalytic force for change in
Mississippi, enabling Mississippians to convey a much more positive
national image for their state.
Ball's gripping account illuminates all of this and shows that,
despite racism's long stranglehold on the Deep South, redemption is
not beyond the grasp of those who envision a more just
society.
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