Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [173]
While reporters typed on laptops, the freckled woman with close-cropped gray hair told of coming to Mississippi with her husband in 1964. Rita remembered bidding good-bye to Mickey in Ohio and never seeing him again. She remained composed until she recalled first hearing that the blue station wagon had been found, gutted and burned. That was when “it really hit me for the first time that they were dead.” Fannie Lou Hamer had been with her. “She just wrapped her arms around me and the two of us had our faces together and our tears were mingling with each other and we cried.” Some in the gallery wept. Later, a tearful Carolyn Goodman read the court her son’s postcard from Meridian—“This is a wonderful town, and the weather is fine. I wish you were here. . . .”
In between the grieving women, most evidence came from the dead—testimony read from witnesses long deceased. From the 1967 trial transcript, jurors heard of Killen telling his klavern about the “elimination” order, Killen gathering Klansmen, Killen siccing the men on their prey. Living witnesses added more details. A former Meridian cop recalled Killen telling him all about the murders. A convict in a prison jumpsuit recalled his grandfather asking Killen “if he had anything to do with those boys being killed, and he said ‘yes,’ and he was proud of it.” After three days, Fannie Lee Chaney, walking with a cane to the witness box, concluded the prosecution’s case. She remembered making breakfast that Sunday for the trio. Young Ben had cried as his brother prepared to leave. Her oldest son had promised his brother to take him out when he came back, but “J. E. never come back.”
Defense attorneys called on the alibi Killen had used in 1967. He had been at a funeral home that night, mourning for “old Uncle Alex Rich.” But Rich’s family claimed he was not related to Killen, and another witness said Killen had merely entered the funeral home and looked around. “I thought it was unusual because he wasn’t that close to the family.” Summing up, the defense called the trial “nothing but stirring a pot of hate for profit.” But Mississippi’s attorney general compared the Klan to terrorists in Iraq, then urged the jury, “Do your duty. Honor Mississippi. Honor Neshoba County.”
Jurors deliberated for an afternoon before telling the judge they were deadlocked. The judge ordered them to resume deliberation the next day—June 21. At 11:30 a.m., they filed back into the courtroom. Killen sat in a dark sport coat, his head shaking slightly as the verdict was read. On each of three counts, the jury found him guilty of manslaughter. Families hugged and fought back tears. Speaking for his mother, Ben Chaney said, “She believes the life of her son has value.” Rita Schwerner Bender was disgusted that the charge had been reduced to manslaughter but thanked the people of Neshoba County for bringing about this “day of great importance.” Killen was sentenced to sixty years. Released on bail pending appeal and his own complaints of poor health, he was soon seen driving around Neshoba County, flaunting his freedom. In August, an angry judge ordered him back to jail, where he remains.
Each June 21, as they have every Freedom Summer anniversary since 1965, dozens come to Neshoba County to remember. Setting out in a caravan, they visit James Chaney’s grave, now braced upright to deter vandals. Then, driving along Route 19, recently renamed Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner Memorial Highway, they turn onto Rock Cut Road and enter its eerie, haunted woods. At the exact