Posted on 10/01/2004 8:49:33 PM PDT by WKB
A reputed Ku Klux Klansman under investigation for the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi has no intention of joining a white supremacist group at next week's state fair, his wife said Friday.
Betty Jo Killen, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from her home in Union, said her 79-year-old husband never told Nationalist Movement leader Richard Barrett that he would attend the fair.
"He has nothing to do with the booth,'' she told The AP. "That is Richard Barrett's doing. Richard Barrett wanted publicity and he got plenty.''
Mrs. Killen said Barrett did tell her husband about the Nationalist Movement's plans at the fair, which opens a 12-day run next Wednesday, but "my husband made no commitment to go.''
Barrett's successful push for a Nationalist Movement booth and his promotion of Killen as the booth's featured attraction triggered protests earlier this week by the NAACP, area leaders and other groups, and some calls to boycott the 12-day fair.
Barrett, an attorney in the tiny Learned community, could not immediately be reached Friday for comment. However, Barrett said Thursday that he had talked to Killen, a preacher, about a week earlier and was Killen would show up at the booth at some point.
Barrett plans to use the booth to collect signatures on a petition in support of Killen.
Hinds County Sheriff Malcolm McMillin has said he will open his own fair booth and offer fairgoers a petition encouraging the state attorney general to press the investigation of Killen.
Killen was tried in 1967 on federal conspiracy charges related to the killings of the three civil rights workers in Neshoba County. He was freed after a hung jury verdict, but officials say he remains under investigation in the case.
Mrs. Killen said her husband, who no longer has a church but serves as a fill-in pastor, "has gotten a raw deal in all this. Edgar is an innocent man, a good man. You won't find a better man no where.''
In a campaign dubbed Freedom Summer, hundreds of volunteers came south in 1964 to help blacks register to vote.
Volunteers Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, white men from New York, and James Chaney, a black man from Mississippi, were together in a car near the Neshoba County town of Philadelphia when they were stopped by Klansmen, beaten and shot to death.
Hundreds of people, including Gov. Haley Barbour, gathered in June at an event promoted by the Philadelphia Coalition to mark the 40th anniversary of the slayings and call for the investigation to reopen.
Though the state never brought murder charges, seven Klansmen were convicted on federal civil rights violations. None served more than six years.
PING
MS PING
I can't believe this whole thing is getting this much attention. If you think about the number of nuts in the world, this is only getting press time because some nut wanted press time. The press has given him exactly that.
Honestly WKB, I don't want to be associated with threads
involving the klan good bad or indifferent. Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn about the klan or the mississppi state fair.
I realize you only pinged to engage me due to our last bout on a similar thread that you had posted. To me the klan is a non-malignant tumor of insignificant mass consisting of a sub-human culture more often associated with abnormal fecal matter.
So please sir, do not ping me to engage in conversations regarding the so called klan.
thanks in advance.
tnp
"To me the klan is a non-malignant tumor of insignificant mass consisting of a sub-human culture more often associated with abnormal fecal matter."
That pretty much sums up the way the rest of us on the Mississippi
ping list thinks about them.
Had you not been so obessessed with the beheadings, you
might have been able to see this.
Too bad....
"Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn..."
Not only do you NOT read posts correctly, but you
steal MY line.
But, most of all, you insulted me, and others.
You stereotyped us better than any of the MSM could have wished to do.
And, they have been doing so for a very, very long time.
I am, now, a Grandmother.
I've been living with this since my childhood.
Unless you have ever lived in Mississippi, you have absolitely NO standing in this debate.
You entered into it at your own peril.
Honestly WKB, I don't want to be associated with threads
involving the klan good bad or indifferent. Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn about the klan or the mississppi state fair.
Aw gee whiz I was hoping to put you on the MS Ping List
RATS!!!
Don't worry about it. I got your six.
I stole "your line?" As a reminder "grandmother since childhood?" the line is not yours. The line belongs to Clark Gable the actor portraying a fictional character.
And so you know as well, I never figured the MS ping list for a racist group. I'll explain it just one more time for your benefit. The klan is an insignificant mass of excrement unworthy of our time. There are at this time much more pressing matters. It is a waste of band width to post such trivial nonsense at this time. My point was/is that we must reserve our prayers, our strength, and our undivided attention for the war on terror, our troops and our President.
So please excuse me for interjecting my opinion once again. However, my opinion remains unchanged. The klan nor the MS fair is not relevant. But the war on terror is.
So if you don't mind, I'll be movin along now.
So if you don't mind, I'll be movin along now.
Don't let the door hit you in the a** on the way out.
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