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].