Closing Arguments In 1964 Killings

Mourners return to Mt. Zion United Methodist Church every year to remember three civil rights workers who gave their lives in the fight for equal rights more than four decades ago.

But this year's ceremony in the small Mississippi town of Philadelphia was especially significant.

Closing arguments are expected Monday in the murder trial of former Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen, who is charged with orchestrating the slayings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

Killen - an 80-year-old sawmill operator, part-time preacher and one-time local Klan leader - is facing the first-ever state murder charges in connection with the June 21, 1964, killings.

The disappearance of the young men, who were investigating a fire at Mt. Zion, focused the nation's attention on the Jim Crow code of segregation in the South and helped spur passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

During a memorial service on Sunday, Rita Bender, Schwerner's widow, joined others to remember the bloody civil rights struggle and the sacrifices the three young men made.

Bender told the congregation after the ceremony that it was important to understand the racial climate in Mississippi in the 1960s.

"I think it's important that we seek to understand how a government became complicit in terror and how good people looked aside and let it happen," Bender said. "Governments can run amok again."

Joy Porterfield recalled the solemn feeling she had standing over the charred remains of the small wood-frame church 41 years ago.

"It was just burnt, burnt to the ground," she said. "That old wooden church."

The day was June 17, 1964, one day after a gang of Ku Klux Klansmen had come to Mt. Zion and beaten members of the all-black congregation before setting it ablaze.

"All I could see was the bell," Porterfield said

The church bell that Porterfield remembers seeing in the ashes so many years ago, is now part of a memorial at the church.

A granite monument sits at its side as a reminder of the sacrifices made by Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman.

It reads: "This memorial is prayerfully and proudly dedicated to the memory of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, who gave their life in the struggle to obtain human rights for all people."

The three were investigating the burning of Mt. Zion when they were murdered as part of what prosecutors say was a plot carried out by the Ku Klux Klan.

Leroy Clemens, co-chairman of the Philadelphia Coalition, a group that advocated the prosecution of the murders, told the congregation that Killen's trail is a hopeful sign for Neshoba Countians.

"That murderer is going to be found guilty," Clemens said. "Justice is going to speak loud and clear."

Killen has maintained his innocence for years and says he was not present when the three were beaten and shot.

Clemens says the three civil rights workers did not die in vain.

"What's really moving about that moment is that the Klan and the state government thought that by putting those men's lights out they could stop the movement," he said. "But instead it spread the light."