Racism is alive and signing autographs in Mississippi:
Then you read a story from the Clarion-Ledger newspaper of Jackson, Miss. It says the state fair is opening next month. And that, along with enjoying the fun house and the State Championship Mule Pull, fairgoers will have the chance to shake hands with, or get an autograph from, the chief suspect in the Ku Klux Klan’s 1964 murders of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner. Shake hands. Or get an autograph. For those who don’t know: Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner went to Mississippi seeking to register black voters. In the South in 1964, that was a crime sometimes punishable by death. Seven men were convicted of the murders, but their alleged ringleader, an alleged preacher named Edgar Ray Killen, went free after a jury deadlocked 11 to 1 in favor of conviction. According to the Clarion-Ledger, the juror who held out said she could not bring herself to convict a preacher. The 79-year-old Killen reportedly remains under state investigation for the 40-year-old crime. He has never recanted his hateful views. Killen was invited to man a booth at the fair by a lawyer named Richard Barrett, head of a white supremacist group. He intends to hand out cards bearing images of Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner with a circle around them and a line through them. A legend on the card describes the martyrs as communists who ”invaded” Mississippi. These are what fairgoers will be encouraged to have Killen sign.