Delayed justice

last updated 8 January 2015

Philadelphia, Miss.

Edgar Ray Killen, a former Ku Klux Klansman and Baptist preacher, was convicted of manslaughter this week in the civil-rights-era killings that inspired the film Mississippi Burning. The verdict came 41 years to the day after three young activists—James Chaney, 21, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24—were beaten and shot by Klansmen after trying to investigate a fire at a black church. Their bodies were found 44 days later, buried in a ditch. Prosecutors said Killen, 80, was the one who had rounded up the mob. But Schwerner’s widow, Rita Schwerner Bender, said the case should not be declared closed. “Preacher Killen didn’t act in a vacuum,” Bender said. “The state of Mississippi was complicit in these crimes.”