Testimony was heard in the trial of Edgar Ray Killen for the June 21, 1964, murders of 3 civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi. The reputed Klansman was indicted for slaying three civil rights workers who were in Mississippi in the summer of 1964 as part of a movement to register blacks to vote and help run educational programs in the South. The trial Mississippi v. Edgar Ray Killen was held at the Neshoba County Courthouse. Coverage was provided by WJTV (Jackson, MS) for Mississippi Public Broadcasting. Following the fourth day of testimony, Jurors announced they were firmly and evenly divided about the proper verdict. Neither the judge, nor the forewoman, referred to the division as a deadlock, and the panel was due back in court the next day to continue deliberations. ~No footage is available for the first day of the trial with the opening statements due to a problem with the courthouse audio system.

For Buford Posey, a white man raised in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the Second World War had a civilizing influence. "When I was coming up in Mississippi I never knew it was against the law to kill a black man," he says. "I learned that when I went in the Army. I was 17 years old. When they told me, I thought they were joking."

For several decades Posey's assumption about the relative value of black life was effectively borne out by the state's judiciary. Among others, the murders of 14-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till, in Money in 1955; the state's NAACP chairman Medgar Evers, in Jackson in 1963; the three young civil rights workers--James Chaney (21), Andrew Goodman (20) and Michael Schwerner (24)--in Philadelphia in 1964; and civil rights supporter Vernon Dahmer, in Hattiesburg in 1966 all went unpunished.

Four men still living whose murderous crime in 1964 underscored to a shocked nation and world the evil the regime of legalized racism in the American South fostered.

Alcorn reunion

Decades after the event, this programme follows the case of 79-year-old Edgar Ray Killen (pictured), the alleged perpetrator of the attacks, as he finally stands trial. With access to both the prosecutors a

The system, from slavery to violently enforced segregation to today's nuanced discrimination, remains without a national apology, no truth commission, no real sign that the nation is fully ready to understand its past. One Klansman is now behind bars. Ame

Before Charles Marcus Edwards testified, defendant James Ford Seale rocked back and forth vigorously in a maroon leather chair. But as Edwards described the events leading to the teenagers' 1964 deaths, Seale sat still and stared at his cousin, a Baptist

Fannie Lee Chaney, “grandmother” of the Mississippi civil rights movement, was honored on Saturday as funeral services were held at First Union Baptist Church in Meridian. Mother to James Earl Chaney, one of three civil-rights workers killed in the

"I've heard more talking to that your daddy and granddaddy was in the Klan than I have him, to tell the truth."

The coalition had attempted to work with Chaney and his spokesmen . . .

Organizers say that by taking charge of the activities local residents set the tone, not out-of-state organizers who had sought this year to take control.

Ben Chaney and Neshoba Murders

Ben Chaney and Neshoba Murders

extended overview of his work

profile of Jerry Mitchell

jerry mithcell profile - clarion ledger

40th anniversary of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner murders

The suspect, Edgar Ray Killen, a 79-year-old preacher who, investigators say, organized and led two carloads of Klansmen on the night of the killings, was arrested without incident at his home in Philadelphia, Miss., and charged with the murders of Michae

Since the reinvestigation, three potential new witnesses have been discovered.

A former civil rights worker says she believes the lives of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman may have been saved if she had been told the truth June 21, 1964.

For many suspects in the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, life has hardly changed.

Former Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Andrew Rainey Sr. died last week. Rainey's former chief deputy, Cecil Price Sr., died in May 2001.

More than 2,000 people attending the Mississippi State Fair signed a petition calling for the prosecution of people involved in the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County.