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PERMISSION SOUGHT FOR KILLEN TRIBUTE -- NATIONALIST MOVEMENT HELPING PLAN EVENT PROPOSED FOR SEPTEMBER 18 AT NESHOBA COURTHOUSE |
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by Jerry Mitchell
Edgar Ray Killen, the Klansman convicted of orchestrating the killings of three civil rights workers, is set to be honored Sept. 18 on the lawn of the Neshoba County Courthouse. The event is being called "Killen Appreciation Day," said white supremacist Richard Barrett, who heads the Nationalist Movement in Learned. "It's an old-fashioned Mississippi homecoming. It's held for sports figures and beauty queens. Why not political prisoners?" A Neshoba County jury recently convicted the 80-year-old sawmill operator and part-time preacher of manslaughter in the June 21, 1964, killings of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon sentenced Killen to 60 years in prison. Killen is free on appeal bond. Killen Five days before the trio's killings, according to testimony at a 1967 federal conspiracy trial in the slayings, Killen led a Klan meeting and asked for volunteers, who went out and beat members of the Mount Zion Methodist Church and burned the church. The idea of honoring the Klansman who orchestrated the killings and who allegedly oversaw the beatings of church members, including her mother and brother, upsets Jewel McDonald of Philadelphia. "We're searching for terrorist cells all over the world, and we've got one right here in Philadelphia. He is just as dangerous." Barrett She said she hopes citizens in Philadelphia won't go anywhere near the courthouse on "Killen Appreciation Day." Gerald McManus of Clearwater, Fla., the Nationalist Movement member organizing the event, said he spoke with Killen for an hour Tuesday and that Killen said he wanted to be there if he was able to do so "physically and legally." Killen's attorney, James McIntyre of Jackson, said he wants his client to stay away, recalling the parade greeting fighter Mike Tyson after he finished his prison sentence for rape. If Killen opposes the event, slated to start at 2 p.m., Barrett said, "Then we wouldn't do it, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen." To hold the event, organizers need permission from the sheriff, whom Barrett wrote Wednesday. On Friday, Gordon freed Killen on a $600,000 appeal bond after he said the state failed to prove Killen was a danger to the community. In copies of correspondence between Killen and inmate Travis Golie obtained by The Clarion-Ledger, the Klansman predicted his release in a July 23 letter: "When I get my bond, hopefully in two weeks, I plan to preach and be in services as far as Louisiana." Attorney General Jim Hood is challenging Killen's appeal bond, pointing out a threat for which Killen was convicted in 1975 and a threat Killen's brother is accused of delivering against the judge prior to trial. McManus said Killen deserves to be honored. "I think he's been terribly abused by the state of Mississippi," he said. "He's an 80-year-old man. You know (in prison) they had them sleeping on a concrete slab? That really is an abomination." At his bond hearing, Killen — who broke both legs in a tree-cutting accident in March — complained about his lack of a pillow in prison, saying he believed the cot had damaged the pins in his legs. McManus wrote the 2001 novel, Dark Millennium, in which he has the president purging "all liberals in American society, including many members of the media." He said neo-Nazi William Pierce called it a worthy successor to his 1978 novel, The Turner Diaries, which has inspired some of extremist violence over the past two decades, including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168. Golie, the 21-year-old editor of the Skinheadz Web site, wrote Killen the same day the jury convicted the Klansman: "You have defended your kindred, God's chosen people. You walk in righteousness, and the Lord Yahweh will bless you for your good deeds." Golie, serving time in the Iowa State Penitentiary for robbery, wrote Killen in prison: "You have been robbed of your freedom because these tyrrants (sic) (are) abusing their power to entertain these foreigners, terrorist(s) and aliens." Killen responded to Golie in a July 23 letter, "Your letter is one of the most factual I have received." He told Golie that "my Christian convictions is (sic) almost all I have left, but the liberal communist element will never take that from me. "I will go to my grave saying wake up America. You are too young to die. Please don't keep going the way of the foreigners, aliens and most politicians of America." |
