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Preacher Guilty in ‘Mississippi Burning’ Case
the three manslaughter charges is
punishable by up to 20 years. Judge
Marcus Gordon scheduled sentenc
ing for Thursday.
Civil rights volunteers Andrew
Goodman and Michael - two white
New Yorkers - and James Chaney, a
black Mississippian, were intercepted
by Klansmen in their station wagon
on June 21, 1964. Their bodies were
found 44 days later buried in an
earthen dam, in acase that was drama
tized in the 1988 movie “Mississippi
Burning.”
Prosecutors said Killen - a part-
time preacher and sawmill operator -
organized the carloads of Klansmen
who hunted down and killed the three
young men.
On Tuesday, cheers could be heard
outside the two-story, red brick court
Blamed for 1964 murders
of 3 civil rights workers
(A P) — Forty-one years to the
day after three civil rights w orkers
w ere beaten and shot to death, an
80-year-old preacher and form er Ku
Klux K lansm an was found guilty of
m anslaughter Tuesday in a trial that
m arked M ississippi's latest attem pt
to atone for its bloodstained, racist
past.
The jury of nine whites and three
blacks took nearly six hours to clear
Edgar Ray Killen of murder but con
vict him of the lesser charges in the
1964 killings that galvanized the
struggle for equality and helped bring
about passage of the 1964 Civil Rights
A d v e r tis e in
Act.
Killen, a bald figure with owlish
bifocals, sat impassively in his wheel
chair, an oxygen tube up his nose, as
he listened to the verdict.
"Forty-one years after the tragic
murders ... justice finally arrives in
Philadelphia, Miss,” said Rep. Bennie
Thompson. Mississippi’s only black
congressman. "Yet, the state of Mis
sissippi must see to it that the wrongs
of yesterday do not become the alba
trosses o f today.”
The murder charge carried up to life
in prison. But Killen could still spend
the rest of his life behind bars; each of
J J o r t la n b ( O b s c n w r 503
Cold, Broken or Drafty
Windows?
Edgar Ray Killen
2ss 0033
house in this small to\yn after Killen
was convicted. Passers-by patted
Chaney’s brother, Ben, on the back,
and a woman slowed her vehicle and
yelled, "Hey, Mr. Chaney, all right!”
Ben Chaney thanked prosecutors
and “the white people who walked up
to me and said things are changing. I
think there’s hope.”
S c h w e rn e r’s
w id o w ,
R ita
Schwemer Bender, hugged District
Attorney Mark Duncan and called it
“a day of great importance to all of
us.” But she said others also should
be held responsible for the slayings.
"Preacher Killen didn’t act in a
vacuum,” she said. "The state of
Mississippi was complicit in these
crimes and all the crimes that oc
curred, and that has to be opened
up.”
Democrats Urge Inquiry on Bush, Iraq
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Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. (center), Rep. Sheilia Jackson Lee,
D-Texas, (left) and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.deliver petitions
to the White House Thursday demanding an official inquiry to
determine if President Bush intentionally misled Congress in his
march toward war in Iraq. (AP photo)
Memo exposes tainted motives
(AP) - A mid new questions about
President Bush’s drive to topple
Saddam Hussein, several House
Democrats urged Congress Thurs
day toconduct an official inquiry to
determine whether the president
intentionally misled Congress.
At a public forum where the word
“impeachment” loomed large, Ex
hibit A was the so-called Downing
Street memo, a prewar document
leaked from inside the British gov
ernment. Rep. John Conyers of
Michigan, the ranking Democrat
on the House Judiciary Committee,
organized the event.
Recounting a meeting of Prime
Minister Tony Blair’s national se
curity team, the memo says the Bush
administration believed that war
was inevitable and was determined
to use intelligence about weapons
of mass destruction to justify the
ouster of Saddam.
“The intelligence and facts were
being fixed around the policy,” one
of the participants was quoted as
saying at the meeting, which took
place just after British officials re
turned from Washington.
Conyers and a half-dozen other
m e m b e rs o f C o n g re s s w ere
stopped at the W hite House gate
later T hursday when they hand-
deliv ered p e titio n s signed by
560,000 A m ericans who want
Bush to provide a detailed re
sponse to the D ow ning Street
memo. W hen C onyers couldn’t
get in, an anti-w ar dem onstrator
shouted, ’’Send Bush out!”
“Quite frankly, evidence that
appears to be building up points to
whether or not the president has
deliberately misled Congress to
make the most important decision a
president has to make, going to
war,” Rep. Charles Rangel of New
York, senior Democrat on the House
Ways and Means Committee, said
earlier at the event on Capitol Hill.
M isleading C ongress is an im
peachable offense, a point that
Rangel underscored by saying
h e’s already been through two
im peachm ents. He referred to the
impeachment of President Clinton
for an affair w ith a W hite House
intern and o f President Nixon for
W atergate, even though Nixon
resigned to avoid im peachm ent.
Conyers pointed to statements
by Bush in the run-up to invasion
that war would be a last resort. “The
veracity of those statements has -
to put it mildly - come into ques
tion,” he said.
Bias Found in Media Coverage
Victims who are male, black get ignored
(AP) - Most of the missing adults reetor of the W ashington-based
tracked by the FBI are men. More Project for Excellence in Journalism.
On its website, the National Cen
than one-in-five of those abducted
ter
for Missing Adults profiles more
or kidnapped are black.
But you might not get that im than 1,000 individuals, including
pression from the news media, and photos, physical descriptions and
some journalism watchdogs are short narratives o f when they were
now taking the industry to task for last seen. They are young and old,
what they see as a disproportion working-class and professional, of
ate emphasis on cases in which all ethnic backgrounds. Most are
white girls and women — over average-looking.
whelmingly upper-middle
class and attractive— dis
appear.
Television executives,
who receive much o f the
criticism, defend theircov-
erage. They stress that
eases such as the recent
disappearance in A rubaof
18 -y ear-o ld
N a ta le e
Holloway of Alabama are -Tom Rosenstiel, director of
extraordinary, and would Excellence in Journalism
be newsworthy no matter
And most never receive a men
her background.
But some insist that media atten tion in their local newspapers or
tion on so few people overshad television broadcasts, said Erin
ows the more than 1OO,(XX) active Bruno, a ease ma nager at the center
files on missing adults and children who tries to interest media outlets
currently tracked by the Federal in publicizing missing adults.
Many consider women more
Bureau of Investigation.
“To be blunt, blond white chicks sympathetic potential victims than
who go missing get covered and men— and white women even more
poor, black, Hispanic or other people so, said Kristal Brent Zook, a pro
of color who go missing do not get fessor at Columbia University’s
covered," said Tom Rosenstiel, di- journalism school who wrote an
article published in this month’s
Essence magazine about missing
black women who are largely ig
nored.
“ W h o ’s a p p e a lin g ? W h o ’s
sexy?” she asked. “The virginal,
pure, blond princess is m issing....
It has a lot to do with class and
sexuality and ageism, not just race.”
Maynard said many news direc
tors, editors and everyday people
stereotype men and minori
ties who turn up missing and
assume “it’s drugs or crimi
nal activity or some sort of
pathology." If journalists —
c o n sc io u sly o r u n c o n
sciously — expect men and
minorities to be crime victims,
she said, few will consider it
newsworthy if that actually
happens.
Dan Shelley, chairman of
the Radio-Television News
Directors Association, said that un
conscious bias is possible.
But “to the extent that we as an
industry have created a perception
in some that w e're ignoring missing
person cases involving men or
people of certain ethnicities, it’s
unfortunate," he said. “The more
diverse our work forces are and
newsrooms are, the greater the
chances our stories wi 11 truly reflect
our communities."
To be blunt, blond white
chicks who go missing get
covered and poor, black,
Hispanic or other people
o f color. ..do not get covered.
Smith Late on Lynching Apology
continued
to W O R K + to P L A Y + to L IV E
See where it takes you.
i
1
from Front
Senator, Democrat Ron Wyden, be
came a co-sponsoreither the day or
the evening of the voting, after it
had become clear the resolution
enjoyed widespread support.
By Friday, four days after pas
sage, the m issin g sig n a tu re s
dwindled to eight Republicans.
Absent were Lamar Alexander of
Tennessee; Thad C ochran and
Trent Lott o f Mississippi; John
Cornyn of Texas; Mike Enzi and
Craig Thomas of Wyoming; and
Judd Gregg and John Sununu of
New Hampshire.
African American leaders have
criticized senators who didn't sign
the resolution.
“They are worried about votes,
or they lack values if they don’t
recognize the significance of issu
ing an apology,” said Dan Duster,
the great grandson of Ida B. Wells.
Wells, an African-American jour
nalist. was the first person to sug
gest anti-lynching legislation in the
late 1800s. Shefoughtforalawagainst
lynching until her death in 1931.