An Evil Memory from the Past

In my early teens I was greatly troubled by news stories about the murders of civil rights workers and African Americans in the south, usually in Mississippi and Alabama. I was both outraged and embarrassed by the fact that the murderers were known and protected, even honored, within their communities. In one case the Feds brought the murderers to trial in a local courtroom, proved their case, the defending attorney ranted about how worthless blacks were as a race, and the jury found the men, all local law enforcement officers, not guilty. Several of the jury members helpfully explained that the murdered boys deserved it and they wouldn't find anyone guilty of killing them.

All of this came back to mind today when I read a story on AOL about one of these cases that has been resurrected. Here are some snippets from the story about the arrest of a former deputy for the murder of two young men:

The former deputy, James Ford Seale, of Roxie, Miss., was named in a federal indictment charging him in connection with the teens' disappearance and deaths while they were hitchhiking in a rural area of the state east of Natchez. Until recently, Seale was thought to be dead, and the investigation into the two deaths had long been abandoned.

[At the time] Federal authorities, who were focusing on the more famous "Mississippi Burning" killings, turned the case over to local authorities. A short time later, a justice of the peace called an end to the inquiry without presenting evidence to a grand jury.

The case is the latest long-dormant civil rights-era killing to be reopened decades after the crimes were committed. The others include:

-A 1994 conviction in Mississippi of Byron de la Beckwith for the 1963 sniper killing of NAACP leader Medgar Evers.

-Bobby Frank Cherry, convicted in 2002 in Alabama of killing four black girls in the bombing of a Birmingham church in 1963. In 2001, Thomas Blanton was convicted in the church bombing.

-Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old former Klansman, convicted of manslaughter in June 2005 in the deaths of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, the three civil rights workers who were killed near Philadelphia in 1964.

That's a long list of old cases. What's going on here?

Basically the Feds knew they couldn't get convictions and that no one in these communities would cooperate. So over time they lost interest and lost track - btw, do you really think that anyone who had ever known Mr Seale ever thought he was "dead"? In other words these murderers were known and protected.

This was what I knew at the time and that made me mad, disgusted, and ultimately cynical, especially about that good ol' down home religion I knew so well. Every one of these murders took place in communities that are as religious as any in the country. The murderers all went to church and were well known in their Christian communities. And every one of these Christian communities covered up for them, and in some cases made it clear that they regarded the perpetrators as honorable men simply defending their godfearing communities from godless outsiders - the words Jews and Yankees came up frequently in their conversations (this was all long ago, and my memory is no better than anyone else's, but I do not believe I am mischaracterizing what I heard at the time).

These people were and are the immediate ancestors of the Bible Belt communities that gave rise to much of the religiosity current in America today. I am not saying that anyone still feels that way or is in any way responsible for what happened so many years ago. In fact there is a sprig of hope in the fact that attitudes have changed enough for these cases finally to be brought to trial.

But I am a child of my past, as is everyone. This is what I picture even now when I am confronted with a certain type of religiosity. It is, perhaps, a mindless prejudice I should abandon. Perhaps. I just have this nagging feeling that not enough has changed, or can change. Human nature is eterenal. Substitute Muslims, or gays, or HIV positive people, for the black, civil rights workers and Jews of my youth and you can see what worries me.

I could be wrong, I keep telling myself.