It is never too late to end terror. That’s what I think about as I look at the news about the conviction of Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen in the murders of civil rights icons/martyrs Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, whose story was told in the movie, “Mississippi Burning.” I cannot help but reflect on the long history of unaddressed human atrocities which for years have become synonymous with the state of Mississippi. It is ironic and troubling that Mississippi’s junior Senator Trent Lott, who recently apologized for his adoration of former segregationist Strom Thurmond, and the state’s senior senator, Thad Cochran, both refused to join the 80 senators who recently voted to apologize for the failure of the Federal government to arrest the wave of lynchings that occurred in the South between the 1890s and the 1960s.

Lott and Thurmond have failed to do what many Mississippians are trying to do, including the prosecutor in the most recent horrific case resulting in the murder conviction of James Ray Killen, in the “Mississippi Burning” murders. The prosecutor says that this charge against Killen is an attempt to erase Mississippi’s shameful history by seeking justice in cases like Killen’s.

Some have argued that this convicted murderer, now 80, should be allowed to die facing his own devils, and not behind bars. But individuals from Holocaust survivors to prosecutors in Rome, who recently brought to justice ten octogenarian former members of the Nazi SS for their part in a 1944 massacre of 500 Italian villagers, would agree that these kinds of organized crimes against any group of people are abhorrent and must be addressed whenever they are brought to light.

But there is another element to this case, an element that lies deep in the Tallahatchie River that flows through northern Mississippi. It was in that river while searches were being conducted for the body of Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old Chicagoan killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman in 1955, that the remains of African American soldiers still clad in their military uniforms were discovered as apparent lynching victims.

One trial and one victory in a reign of terror which has gone on for centuries is a signal that we must embark on the greater work of eliminating domestic terrorism. As thousands of people die in Afghanistan and the Middle East in an effort to eradicate Al Qaeda, how is it that we have not yet been able to eradicate the Klan, founded in 1866?

Maybe we’re focusing our energies on the wrong front. Is an apology by Congressional leaders for the barbarous and heinous acts which my elder relatives from Louisiana still remember enough to say that justice has been served? Is the conviction of the murderers of James Byrd, Jr. whose flesh was ripped from his body in Jasper, Texas in 1998 enough?

No. There is something deeper in America, and not just the South, that needs to be expunged. We need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission like the one held in South Africa. We need to aggressively prosecute all unresolved racist murders during the last 100 years that went unheeded by the government sworn to protect us, and provide reparations to the victims of these murders as has been done for others.

If the “Homeland” is to be truly secure, it must exorcise its own demons first.

Ron Scott, a co-founding member of the Detroit Chapter of the Black Panther Party, is a long-time Detroit-area community activist, speaker, producer and radio/television talk show co-host. He is host and producer of "For My People," one of the longest-running African American-focused public affairs television programs in the nation. He serves as a spokesperson for the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, an eight-year organization that has been at the forefront of fighting police abuse and misconduct. Scott can be reached at [email protected].

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