JACKSON - Forty years later, of their own volition, the people of Neshoba County finally said something that needed to be said.
They apologized to the families of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner for the horrors visited on their boys on June 21, 1964, by members of the Ku Klux Klan - horrors either sanctioned or at least obfuscated by local and state government entities and law enforcement agencies.
On May 26, the Philadelphia Coalition - a tri-racial group that includes the leadership of the white, African-American and Choctaw Indian communities in Neshoba County - officially did something that Democratic gubernatorial nominee and former secretary of state Dick Molpus tried to encourage in 1995.
They said they were "sorry."
Molpus took part in early efforts at meaningful racial reconciliation in Neshoba County, including an offering of a 1989 personal apology to the families of the three slain civil rights workers during the gubernatorial campaign.
During the much-ballyhooed 1995 Neshoba County Fair debate between Molpus and then-incumbent Republican Gov. Kirk Fordice, Fordice chided Molpus for the apology - drawing applause in his opponent's political back yard and ultimately carrying Neshoba County in his re-election bid.
But less than a decade later, the leadership of Neshoba County - including city and county governments, the Choctaw tribal leadership, economic development groups, the local media and a number of individual citizens of all races - has banded together to not only offer that overdue apology, but to stand together to call for justice in the case.
Last week, Attorney General Jim Hood announced that he had asked for the U.S. Justice Department's assistance in seeking to bring new charges in the case. A 1967 federal trial saw seven Klan members convicted of violating the civil rights of the three slain men, but the state never prosecuted anyone in the slaying.
Led by Neshoba Democrat Publisher Jim Prince and Leroy Clemons, an African-American casino host with the Pearl River Resort gaming complex on the Choctaw reservation, the Philadelphia Coalition includes crusading former Democrat Publisher Stan Dearman, Philadelphia Mayor Rayburn Waddell, Neshoba County Board of Supervisors' President James Young (an African-American minister) and Dawn Lea Mars Chalmers, a young businesswoman whose cousin Florence Mars penned the cathartic, controversial memoir "Witness in Philadelphia."
The coalition's work is far from symbolic. While many of the Klansmen involved in the slaying are dead, some suspects, potential witnesses and officers of the courts remain alive today.
Two key suspects still alive are Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen of Union and onetime KKK "White Knights" Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers of Laurel, now serving a life sentence in Parchman for ordering the 1966 firebombing that killed NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer of Laurel. Testimony in the federal conspiracy trial identified Killen as the Klan leader who coordinated the killings and Bowers as the one who gave the orders.
Both have said they are innocent. A Neshoba County grand jury should be afforded an opportunity to finally decide what happened to Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney 40 years ago.
It's been a long time coming, but Philadelphia and Neshoba County are trying hard to do the right thing. State and federal law enforcement officials need to help then find the path to the truth.
Dick Molpus' apology was right in 1989, it was right in 1995 and the seed it planted is growing strong in 2004.
