One month before I was born, someone in Philadelphia, Mississippi, murdered three civil rights workers.
Someone beat young three men — Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney — within an inch of their lives.
At some point, someone decided the vicious beatings weren’t enough. And so, one by one, someone shot Andy, Mike, and Jimmy. Afterward, someone buried them in the side of a dam.
Their bodies went undiscovered for forty-four days. If this week’s verdict is correct, their killer went undiscovered for four decades.
About half the people I talk to say they’re glad Edgar Ray will finally pay for the misdeeds of his past. The other half — including a surprising number of black people — say, “What good does it do to send an old man like that to jail for something done forty years ago?”
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