The Hindu : International : Ku Klux Klan leader on trial

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Sunday, Jan 09, 2005

International

International

Ku Klux Klan leader on trial

Washington: Forty years after three civil rights workers were killed on a dirt road in Mississippi on a night that came to symbolise the racial hate of the American south, an elderly leader of the Ku Klux Klan appeared in court on Friday to be formally charged with their murder. In proceedings interrupted by a bomb threat, Edgar Ray Killen (in the picture), appeared handcuffed and in an orange prison jump suit to plead not guilty to three counts of murder. Now 79, Mr. Killen was a local Klan leader in Neshoba County, Mississippi when the killings took place in 1964. The FBI identified him as the ringleader of the gang that ran the three civil rights workers off of a lonely road, killed them, and hid their corpses in an earthen dam. For civil rights activists in the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi, the case against Mr. Killen was a bitter-sweet moment. ``If you believe in God you always know you have to wait,'' said Jewel McDonald, who was a teenager that summer, and whose mother and brother were beaten outside their black church only days before the murders.

Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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