Finally Guilty

The jury in the murder trial of Edgar Ray Killen found him guilty of all three counts of manslaughter after deliberations today. Earlier, when the judge called the jury to see how they were doing, they were split 6-6, and I had to wonder how it would turn out in the end. I do not know the specific facts of Killen's guilt (unfortunately E! did not provide full reenactment coverage of this trial) aside from what the media has reported.

41 years ago three men, two white and one black, volunteered to visit Mississippi to help register blacks to vote. Unfortunately this mission lead to their brutal murder - we all know the Southern past, the vitriolic attitudes towards integrating black people into society. Ah yes, those revered southern gentlemen, who couldn't possibly expect people with a different skin color to be productive, valuable members of society! I wasn't born a southerner, but I lived in the south for a considerable portion of my life. Sadly, issues of race integration were still in play in Tennessee when I went to junior high in 1982. And I have to wonder how, in a country that was created so people could be free, you could have an entire race of people oppressed for so long. Of course, I shouldn't be naive. It hasn't been all that long, relatively speaking, that women had the right to vote and a valued place in society in America. Why should I expect things to be any different for a so-called "minority group"?

I guess what burns me up about all this is pretense. Yes, the pretense of the United States of America. Pretense that the U.S. is the mother of all, that our values, our democracy, our social system is above and beyond that of, say Iraq, to the point that we have a categorical imperative to intercede, fix them up, make them a happy democracy (I almost typed democrazy, what does THAT say?) just like us! Sure, they may not actually WANT that. But that doesn't matter, because America is better! One of us, one of us, one of us!

OK, so maybe I'm going a bit overboard here. Back to the subject at hand, we have three young men - on their way to better America and make a difference, who were struck down, viciously, without a thought, in the prime of their lives. All because some southern men didn't like black people. And those three young men lost all the years of the lives, their families lost them, their potential was removed from the world forever (who knows what more they could have done?) and people like Edgar Ray Killen have lived their lives free as birds, doing whatever they wanted, probably never giving a thought to the horrible acts they committed. Why did these men end up going free? Because the 1967 jury deadlocked 11-1, because one juror "could not convict a preacher." And we ALL know preachers are above the law, and of course they could NEVER do anything wrong. They are preachers, right?

I just think that before we start extolling all the virtues America has, we need to think about our dark past. We aren't without fault. We have made mistakes, and we will probably continue to make them. In the end I think we should all take a moment to mourn once again these three lost lives, and be grateful that justice, albeit late, has finally been served.