"The most momentous venture this year in terms of civil
rights is Edgar Ray Killen's indictment and conviction for
manslaughter. The trial exposed what we had expected over 40
years ago - that there was a massive conspiracy against black
people."
- Roy Innis, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality
What I found strange about the local coverage of the
ex-Klansman's June 23 conviction is that few reports mentioned
that two of the slain civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner and
Andrew Goodman, were from New York City and were members of CORE.
I contacted Mr. Innis to get his reaction on the case. He said he
felt that justice had been finally served, but he considered it a
bittersweet victory that the conviction was only for
manslaughter. Clearly, the murders were premeditated, but the
conviction for the lesser charge avoided a hung jury.
Back in 1964, Mr. Innis and Sandy Feldman picketed the Abyssinian
Baptist Church to protest Robert Kennedy, then attorney general,
who was a guest of Adam Clayton Powell. They wanted to push him
to urge J. Edgar Hoover to investigate the murders.
"There was no way that due to the depth and openness of the
conspiracy that the FBI could not have known of its existence and
danger to the citizens," Mr. Innis said in a recent
statement. "Part and parcel of this conspiracy is the lack
of action on the part of the U.S. Congress - in particular, the
Senate of the United States."
Let me remind readers that Mr. Innis was referring to the Senate
of the 1960s, but what happened back then bears some resemblance
to recent senatorial conflicts.
"Numerous times legislation was proposed to outlaw mob rule,
better known as lynching. Those legislations were always
frustrated even after passage by the House of Representatives
because of the parliamentary tactic of the filibuster. Thus, the
filibusters, mostly Democratic senators from the South, were
clearly co-conspirators with the lynchers. The murders of James
Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner by a group of
lynchers led by Edgar Ray Killen had the U.S. Senate as a
co-conspirator in their crime," asserts Mr. Innis.
He continues: "It is a painful, bitter irony today, in the
same year that we were able to obtain the conviction of Edgar Ray
Killen that the black congressional caucus and most of the civil
rights leadership establishments, along with the only
African-American senator, Barack Obama, could find themselves in
the bosom of Robert Byrd, senator from West Virginia, one of the
last great segregationists and filibusters, as partners in the
use of that scurrilous parliamentary tactic in the Senate, that
they were partners in an attempt to maintain filibusters as a
viable and necessary procedure in the U.S. Senate."
Goodman and Schwerner were not only New Yorkers, they were also
Jews, and one would think that Mayor Bloomberg would have made
some formal statement applauding the sacrifice of these New York
natives to the civil rights cause, but I could find no such
declaration on the official mayoral Web site.
Independence Party leader Lenora Fulani refused to repudiate a
statement she made in 1989 in which she called the Jews
"mass murderers of people of color." Mr. Bloomberg
still accepted the endorsement of the Independence Party and a
spokesman for his campaign excused this by saying, "You
don't hold 90,000 [party members] responsible for one person's
comments."
Oh, but you must, Mr. Mayor. It's time that we start holding
everybody responsible for inciting hate in speeches, especially
those made by candidates.
I recently watched the film "Mississippi Burning" on
cable again, and was still spellbound by its plot. The film is
loosely based on the murders of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney,
whose sisters later worked for Mr. Innis in Harlem. It is a stark
reminder of the Jim Crow days when blacks would be beaten if they
so much as looked at a white man.
It was into that world that two New York Jews went to do battle
so that politicians like Ms. Fulani and others could exercise
their constitutional right to rant at will. The least they could
do is acknowledge their sacrifice.