Shocked!!! Why???

I hate to write about stuff like this... I really like to keep it smurfy over on here but, too much is happening that is taking your favorite "Maverick Of All Bloggers" out of his usual smurfy mood. The latest is the investigation of a triple murder that occurred when I was 6 years old that should have been solved then.

Federal authorities will continue to investigate the 1964 Mississippi killings of three civil rights workers, a case that helped pass landmark legislation, despite the death of a key suspect, the Justice Department says. Billy Wayne Posey, 73 years old, died last Thursday. Federal investigators were looking into his possible involvement in the June 21, 1964 killings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, who had been working to register black voters. Posey's funeral was this past Saturday in Philadelphia, MI, the town at the heart of the case.

On Friday afternoon, Alejandro Miyar, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said the death does not "alter our cold-case investigation." The Clarion-Ledger reported that he said federal authorities are assisting state investigators who could bring state charges. Goodman's brother, David Goodman of New York City, said... "This is still the country of law and order, and the laws are clear. There is no statute of limitations on murder."

The slayings that shocked the nation helped spur passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and was dramatized in the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning." I saw the movie in 1988. Entertaining as those types of movies go, but a big load of Hollywood feel-good crap as far as the facts go. This leads me to my point... Why was the nation shocked by this in 1964? They should have been shocked by it in 1904, when it was at its peak. Black people have been kidnapped, lynched, and gone missing for years in the south (and according to my mother and two of my late aunts, even up here in liberal Northern Pennsylvania) and nobody was shocked until those three civil rights workers were lynched in 1964.

I would hate to be the general of any army, as misinformed and unaffected by things as the American people seem to be at times (as my posts from last week more than illuminated), only to be shocked years after the fact. There is an ugly rumor that when the FBI was looking for the bodies of the three civil rights workers, they dragged the Mississippi River and found the bodies of hundreds of dead African-Americans who had gone missing for years and had been lynched. They voted to keep this out of the papers for fear that a major race riot might have erupted with news of their findings. And, America is shocked! Well I'll be damned! I'm gonna ask my blogging brother Carey Carey to forget what I wrote as a comment on his last post. This makes me cussin' mad... I feel like cussin' right now!

I applaud the fact that the Justice Department wants to do right, reopen this case, and bring everyone involved to justice but, on the other hand. it's a little too late. It's 2009 and most of those Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members who took part in all that mayhem are dead and gone to hell by now. The ones who are still alive have one foot in the grave and another one on a banana peel, to quote my late grandmother. What is the point in bringing them to justice now, when you could have brought them to justice in 1964?

Everybody in Philadelphia, MI knew who was involved in the killings. Only seven guys actually served any time and that was for civil rights violations. (Yeah, they violated their civil rights... their civil right to breathe in and breathe out.) The FBI knew that the great state of Mississippi would never bring state charges of murder against any white man for killing a black man in 1964. This was the only avenue they had to get any semblance of justice.

In the summer of 1964, hundreds of FBI agents investigated the trio's disappearance, leading to the discovery of their bodies buried 15 feet beneath an earthen dam. In 1967, 18 men went on trial for conspiring to violate the civil rights of the three victims, and seven of them were convicted. One of the seven, former Neshoba County Sheriff's Deputy Cecil Price, told authorities before his 2001 death that he told Posey in 1964 that he had just jailed the three civil rights workers on a traffic charge and asked Posey to get in contact with Edgar Ray Killen, who helped to orchestrate the killings. The only murder prosecution took place in 2005 when a jury convicted Killen, a reputed KKK leader, on three counts of manslaughter. He is serving 60 years in prison.

Civil rights activists have been pushing for more murder charges. Authorities have said that at least four suspects remain alive. In a 2000 statement, Posey told investigators there were "a lot of persons involved in the murders that did not go to jail" but, he did not identify them. Now he's dead. The others may never be identified and, even if they are and they go to prison, they'll probably be dead in a few years anyway. They've had their entire lives to live while Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner have been moldering in their graves for 45 years. Where is the justice in that?

It's too late for any real justice for them but, I want to thank them. I want to thank all of the people in the civil rights movement for their sacrifice. Because of them, I can live a life where I don't have to fear the kind of death that they suffered. And, because of them, I can put my size 12 + 1/2 foot up the crack of a Klansman's hind parts and fear no reprisals. Once again, I thank you and Carey Carey. I'm sorry... hopefully, your smurfy "Maverick of All Bloggers" will return tomorrow!