For Civil Rights Crusaders, Arrest Brings Relief

[TacticalPeek]

For Civil Rights Crusaders, Arrest Brings Relief

By Carol Morello
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 8, 2005; Page B01

For Lawrence Guyot Jr., Thursday's arrest of a suspect in the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi was not only a philosophical vindication but also something deeply personal.

Four decades ago, as a field worker with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Guyot almost joined Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney in their drive to the Mississippi town of Philadelphia to investigate the bombing of a black church. At the last moment, he decided not to go. But he advised them that with all the national media attention to a voter registration drive in the state that summer, they would be perfectly safe.

Their bodies were found 40 days later. More than 40 years would pass before authorities would arrest a reputed Ku Klux Klan member on murder charges.

"I prayed to live until this day," Guyot, a program monitor with the D.C. Office of Childhood Development, said yesterday. "We fought for this. We dreamed of this. And now it is reality. It's a statement that political assassinations are not acceptable in the state of Mississippi. Never again."

snip

"I think this ranks up there with the passage of the Voting Rights Act," he said. "This is a tremendous achievement for the state of Mississippi."

Today's Mississippi bears little resemblance to the state in which Guyot was born, he added.

"In 1964, the state policy of Mississippi was one of apartheid," he said. "It brought terror on black and white citizens. I've seen the state change to such an extent that it convicted the killer of Medgar Evers, and it will be moving now to bring justice in the murders of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman.

"I am proud to be a Mississippian."


more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57434-2005Jan7.html




A long long time coming . . . oh, for a hanging judge.

[bluestateguy]

1. That old fart should be executed!

I don't care how sick or "unfit" he is to stand trial. After his guilt is proven at trial he should sit in the same electric chair that thousands of black Mississippians have sat in in decades past.

[Maddy McCall]

4. Amen, brother. How well do you have to be to have a needle placed...

in your arm? He will get lethal injection if he gets the death sentence. He won't suffer like he made Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner suffer.

I hate the death penalty, but in this bastard's case, he deserves it.

[JoFerret]

15. And how does that help anyone?

It certainly would not honor the memory and work of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner.

[tonyraytx]

2. What point this arrest prove?

He only got a few years to go anyway. Should have done our own justice instead of waiting forty years till the government fell like doing it job.

[Maddy McCall]

3. Ask the remaining family members. They'll tell you...

We've been convicting these devils for the past decade. Several of them are rotting in jail as I type. Some have had to meet their maker, and I am certain they are burning in hell.

The point is that there is no statute of limitations on murder, and, though it took forty years to get the job done, it's getting done.

Better late than never that these devils should sit inside a prison cell to confront the evil they have done and the shame they have brought Mississippi and their families. Let them rot.

[Maddy McCall]

5. What's your problem with an alleged murderer being tried?

I know country-bumpkin, redneck swamp hicks who think that this is a GOOD THING.

Yours is the first objection I have heard. :eyes:

[tonyraytx]

6. My Problem is not alleged murderer being tried

But, how long it took

They knew all along who did, someone form the FBI was there when the murders took place and they waited 40 years. Sure this will bring justice to the families, but for what a few years. He live his life thanks to this government.


Thanks for nothing America

[Maddy McCall]

8. Instead of waxing philosophical about it...

let's look at the two choices.

1. Don't try the murderer. Allow murderer to die never tried for the crime he committed.

2. Try the murderer. Let the jury have its say.

Which is the best?

[tonyraytx]

11. How about

3. Take justice in your hands, and killed him there, and not waiting for Hoover to finish playing dress-up.

What make you think he going to stand trial. He might not live to see it.

[Der Blaue Engel]

13. Democrats aren't generally pro-murder

No matter what the provocation.

That tends to be more of a Republican stance.

[tonyraytx]

14. We were

40 years ago, But only to blacks Remember?

[JoFerret]

16. "Our own justice" LOL

as in strange fruit you mean? Asinine.

[tonyraytx]

7. And to think that he a minister

I guess he just doing what a good Christian should

[NVMojo]

9. the timing of this arrest is bittersweet with the broadcasting of voter

intimidation yesterday from the halls of our federal government ...

[Lostnote03]

12. Coincidences such as this are truly baffling to this human being!!!!

[Maddy McCall]

10. More about this evil bastard from a 2000 article in the Jackson, MS paper.

http://orig.clarionledger.com/news/0009/10/10mib.html