PREACHER KILLEN: CHANEY, GOODMAN, SCHWERNER

I've highlit the part, below, that helps confirm my belief that the faith I have in the notion that the Constitution must evolve in a certain direction, with no ratcheting back, has more right about it than wrong. 

Preacher Killen is an Originalist, a Textualist, it seems.

I can't be all wrong.

January 14, 2005 | home
	COLD CASE DEPT. VISITING PREACHER KILLEN by Jeffrey Goldberg Issue of 2005-01-17 Posted 2005-01-10 A sign on the narrow road that leads to Edgar Ray Killen’s house, in the low hills southeast of Philadelphia, Mississippi, reads “If You Don’t Believe in God, the Hellfire Awaits You.” On the morning that I visited him, a few years ago, Killen, a reputed Ku Klux Klansman, was waiting for me, a shotgun in his sunburned arms. “I told you I ain’t talking with you,” he said, superfluously. Killen is known around Philadelphia as Preacher. He used to preside over a small church nearby, where he taught the inerrancy of the Bible and the superiority of the Caucasian race, but that day he was apparently caring for his weapons. “My gun’s clean and ready,” he said. We had spoken by telephone earlier, and I had already come to his house once that day, but his dogs, their teeth bared, had surrounded my car. I returned an hour later with a bag of hamburgers from McDonald’s. As the dogs ate, I quickly moved up Killen’s walk, where he and his Remington intercepted me. He was leathery and bent over, but his arms were roped with muscle. He seemed to be living proof that time does not temper rage. He was seventy-six when I saw him. “I told you I don’t want to talk about those boys no more,” he said. The “boys,” Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney—“two Jews and a black,” in the shorthand of the civil-rights martyrology—were Freedom Summer workers (Schwerner and Goodman were from New York; Chaney from Mississippi) who were executed by a posse of white racists. (Schwerner and Goodman were shot in the chest; Chaney was beaten to death.) The killings took place on Rock Cut Road, a short walk from Killen’s house, and it has long been alleged that Killen, who, according to the F.B.I., was a founder of the local Klavern, organized the murder party. He was indicted on federal charges not long after the killings, but he benefitted at trial from a deadlocked jury. A holdout juror said she could not convict a preacher. Killen escaped state charges until last Thursday, when Mississippi indicted him for the murders. (He pleaded not guilty on Friday.) Prosecutors promised that more indictments would be coming. There are eight suspects who are still alive. At the time I saw Killen, Mike Moore, who was at that time the attorney general of Mississippi, was reinvestigating the murders, and I told Killen I was seeking his opinion about the new attention the case was receiving. He looked up and down the road. “You don’t have TV cameras with you?” he asked. Then he relaxed a bit. “It’s over,” he said. “The whole thing’s over a long time ago.” He’d been more talkative a few years earlier in an interview with David Oshinsky for the Times Magazine. “I’m a right-winger who supports the Constitution as written by the Founding Fathers,” he’d said. When Oshinsky asked him about the murders, he replied, “Those boys were Communists who went to a Communist training school. I’m sorry they got themselves killed. But I can’t show remorse for something I didn’t do.” He explained to me that he was wary of the press. Oshinsky, he alleged, had misinterpreted his views. “I believe he’s Jewish,” Killen said. He was resolute about not addressing the case against him, but he hinted that he was the victim of a conspiracy organized by newly powerful African-Americans. “There are people in the government who wouldn’t have ever been allowed in the government before,” he said. It was pointless to ask him about issues of guilt and innocence. Instead, I mentioned a conversation I’d had with Stan Dearman, who was then the editor of the local paper. Dearman had told me that some people in the town were thinking of building a memorial to the murdered civil-rights workers. This prospect sent Killen into a rage. At first, he didn’t even understand. “A memorial?” he asked. “To who? The dead guys?” I nodded. “Never!” he shouted. “It’ll never happen.” After a moment, he asked me to leave. He said, “I’m not a man of violence, but if you don’t get off my property right now, I’m going to shoot you dead.” I went to my car. The dogs gave chase, and I tried hard not to run them over. Killen came out to the road. In my rearview mirror, I saw his face, contorted in fury, slowly disappear.