JACKSON - Like a lot of reporters from around the country, I plan to cover the murder trial of reputed Klansman Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen in Philadelphia for the June 21, 1964, slayings of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.
Unlike most of those reporters - other than old pros like Stanley Dearman, Jim Prince, Jack Tannehill and Debbie Myers - I won't have to ask directions or the name of the best place to eat lunch near the courthouse.
I was born in Philadelphia. I'll be buried there one day. While I don't return home as often since my father died and my mother's failing health necessitated her moving to a facility near my home, I get back to Neshoba County often.
Gale Denley and I enjoy sharing a Neshoba County Fair cabin each summer. I get back to a few ball games at Neshoba Central and Philadelphia High.
Once in a while, I play a humbling round of golf at Dancing Rabbit or have dinner at the Pearl River Resort during the convention season.
Mostly, I stop by Williams Brothers store to visit with friends and take home a little bacon and cheese or get a pair of hunting boots. Christmas Eve at Williamsville is a family tradition - for my family and many, many others.
I thought of all the good things about Philadelphia in reading some of the national accounts of Killen's indictment - and of the frequent dissections of my hometown in the media since the long, hot summer of 1964.
Years ago, a nationally syndicated columnist ventured to the Neshoba County Fair for a visit. She had lunch at our cabin, seemed to have a marvelous time and visited around the fairgrounds. But when her next column appeared, she recounted how she felt a "chill" when she crossed the Neshoba County line.
So as the Killen trial media invasion is mobilizing, a few items for the next wave might be in order:
- Philadelphia today is a nice, growing town with four distinct racial components - whites, African-Americans, native Choctaw Indians and the new Hispanic immigrants that work in the poultry and timber industries. Racial harmony in Neshoba County today is comparable to any city in America.
- Don't make the mistake of forming impressions about Philadelphia or Philadelphians from the film "Mississippi Burning." While the film captured the meanness of the Klansmen and the brutality of the murders, the depiction of Philadelphia was rather laughable.
- Killen wasn't indicted for murder earlier this year because of outside antagonists. The Philadelphia Coalition - a social and political force led by Prince and Leroy Clemons and inspired by decades of courageous reporting by Dearman at The Neshoba Democrat - forged a legal and political environment in which a Neshoba County grand jury eventually heard evidence against Killen.
- Universal consensus on the Killen trial doesn't exist in Philadelphia. There are many of both races who have waited 40 years to see justice done. There are some of both races who know little of the case and are ambivalent to it.
There are still a few who see Killen as a victim of a conspiracy of the media and political opportunists. There are a few who believed what happened in 1964 was wrong, but that too much water has gone under the bridge for real justice to be done.
- Many in the media want to cover the Killen trial as the story of a haunted gothic Southern town healing itself - with Killen's conviction as the final salve to the wounds. That's a myopic take on it.
The healing began years ago among people of good will of all races in Neshoba who wanted better for their children.
