Friday, January 07, 2005

Finishing Unfinished Business

We're good at sending people to diversity training, using politically correct language, and making sure we have people of color in our Annual Report photos. But...the deep-seated issues of intolerance and exclusivity go unexamined.
Raymond W. Smith (1937 - ), business executive

In Lexington Kentucky, The Lexington Herald-Leader featured a prominent clarification on its front page Wednesday, apologizing for the newspaper's failures in covering the 1960s civil rights movement, according to the Washington Post.

It’s more than a bit late, but at least they finally recognized their mistake.

While it’s late, it is never too late to prosecute a hate crime. According to the Associated Press, a reputed Ku Klux Klansman was arrested late on murder charges in the 1964 slaying of three voter-registration volunteers - a case that is one of the last pieces of unfinished business from the civil rights era.

The arrest of Edgar Ray Killen for the alleged murder in the Ku Klux Klan slayings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

Eventually after the murders, seven Klansmen were convicted of federal conspiracy charges in the killings and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three years to 10 years. None served more than six years. But the state never brought murder charges.

"After 40 years to come back and do something like this is ridiculous ... like a nightmare," said Billy Wayne Posey, one of the men convicted.

Sorry Mr. Posey, what is ridiculous is that the suspected killers are out of prison at all.

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