Killen, Edgar Ray

Biography:

"On June 21, 1964, three young civil rights workers-a 21-year-old black Mississippian, James Chaney, and two white New Yorkers, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24-were murdered near Philadelphia, in Nashoba County, Mississippi. They had been working to register black voters in Mississippi during Freedom Summer and had gone to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on trumped-up charges, imprisoned for several hours, and then released after dark into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, who beat and murdered them. It was later proven in court that a conspiracy existed between members of Neshoba County's law enforcement and the Ku Klux Klan to kill them... One...mistrials freed Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen-believed to be the ringleader-after the jury in his case was deadlocked by one member who said she couldn't bear to convict a preacher. On Jan. 7, 2005, four decades after the crime, Edgar Ray Killen, then 80, was charged with three counts of murder. He was accused of orchestrating the killings and assembling the mob that killed the three men. On June 21-the 41st anniversary of the murders-Killen was convicted on three counts of manslaughter, a lesser charge. He received the maximum sentence, 60 years in prison." Taken from http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmjustice4.html

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