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Speakers at civil rights memorial service decry voter apathy
PHILADELPHIA, Miss. — Mississippians need to battle voter apathy to fulfill the purpose of the civil rights movement, attorney Constance Slaughter-Harvey said this past weekend during a memorial service for three young activists killed here 43 years ago.
Slaughter-Harvey was the keynote speaker Sunday during the service at Mt. Zion United Methodist Church outside Philadelphia. It’s the same black church where civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman went on June 21, 1964, to investigate a firebombing by the Ku Klux Klan.
The three young men were arrested and jailed for speeding as they left the church. Hours later, they were released to a mob of waiting Klansmen, who chased them down a dark, rural highway and killed them. Their bodies were found weeks later, buried in a red-clay dam in Neshoba County.
“James, Michael and Andrew were here because they believed in the power of the ballot, and in believing in the power of the ballot, you must register,” Slaughter-Harvey said.
On June 21, 2005 — exactly 41 years after the young men disappeared — former Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of three counts of manslaughter in their deaths. It was the first time the state had brought charges in the case.
About 100 people attended Sunday’s service. The Rev. M. C. Thompson Jr. spoke about voter apathy, especially among young people.
“After all we have [gone] through, we should be running to the polls,” Thompson said. “We’ve come a long ways, and by all means have a ways to go.”
Slaughter-Harvey was the first black woman to graduate from the University of Mississippi Law School, and she worked on former Gov. William Winter’s staff. She successfully argued the case that led to the desegregation of the Mississippi Highway Patrol. She continues to practice law in her hometown of Forest.
Slaughter-Harvey spoke Sunday about the need for equality in politics and education.
“Gov. [Haley] Barbour has had more than 15 judicial appointments during his three and a half years in office, and not one, not one, has been an African American,” she said.
“One thing that bothers me, and I know the men we honor here today would be quite upset, is the role society plays in stigmatizing African American male children,” she said. “Our black males receive a different curriculum than other students, the educational system will quickly toss them out into an alternative prison cell.”
Southern Poverty Law Center: KKK has outposts in Vermont
RUTLAND, Vt. — An organization that tracks hate groups across the country says the Ku Klux Klan has active chapters in Rutland and Hardwick.
But no official in Rutland or Hardwick has detected the presence of the KKK in the areas.
Mark Potok of the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center said the organization was active in the Rutland area in 2006.
He said the KKK was linked to Rutland through a local post office box.
“When a group claims chapters in a given place, we list them unless we have a reason to believe it is false,” he said. “Our listings say that at some point in calendar year 2006, this group was active.”
Rutland police Detective Sgt. Kevin Stevens said he’d never heard of the KKK being active in the area.
Hardwick Police Chief James Dziobek said he hadn’t heard of anything in his community, either.
“I haven’t heard of any cross-burnings or sheet-walkings,” he said.
But Potok said the KKK, which refers to itself as the “invisible army,” could still be there.
“Very frequently, authorities in a given community are surprised to find a hate group operating in their town or operating a mailbox, especially if it turns out to be a drop box,” Potok said. “Especially in a state like Vermont, where the Klan is not very popular, you won’t see your local Klan in public. Just because local police and local anti-racism groups don’t know about it does not make it not true.”
Michael Jackson thanks Burkle, Jesse Jackson for financial advice
NEW YORK — The Rev. Jesse Jackson and billionaire Ron Burkle came through with key advice to save singer Michael Jackson from financial disaster when he was fighting child molestation charges, Jackson said in a court deposition.
The Daily News said in Sunday editions it reviewed seven hours of transcripts, finding that the singer believed disloyal advisers took advantage of him financially before a Santa Maria, Calif., jury acquitted him of child molestation in June 2005.
Jackson testified that during his trial he received wise advice during bathroom break cell phone calls with Burkle, the billionaire friend of former President Clinton.
Burkle brought in Jesse Jackson, who has known Michael Jackson since he was a child, to help with the consultations, the newspaper said.
Michael Jackson said in a deposition taken last summer in Paris that the entertainment industry was “full of sharks, charlatans and impostors.”
“Because there’s a lot of money involved, there’s a bunch of schmucks in there,” he said. “It’s the entertainment world, full of thieves and crooks. That’s not new. Everybody knows that.”
The deposition was made in preparation for a civil trial expected to begin this week in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The case against Jackson was brought by a Hackensack, N.J. finance company that claims Jackson cheated the company of $48 million.
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