Mississippi - One Less Ghost of the Sixties [View All]

Just so you know. We're still - slowly but surely - bringing justice, even if it's from the 60's in the Deep South in Mississippi:

Conviction brings closure

Graveside meeting symbolic of decades-long struggle for justice

MEADVILLE — Thomas Moore clutched the headstone Friday of his brother, killed by Klansmen 43 years ago.

Kneeling on the grave, he said, "I told you I'd do everything I could to get you justice. I've kept my promise."

His visit came fewer than 19 hours after a U.S. District Court jury in Jackson convicted reputed Klansman James Ford Seale of kidnapping and conspiracy for his role in the May 2, 1964, abductions, beatings and killings of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee. The 71-year-old former crop duster could get up to life in prison when sentenced Aug. 24.

The visit came shortly after the slain men's survivors placed a permanent marker at the site where the two teens were abducted.

In 2005, Thomas Moore convinced U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton of Jackson to reopen and prosecute the case.

On Friday morning, Thomas Moore and David Ridgen, a documentary filmmaker for the Canadian Broadcasting Co., showed Dee's sister, Thelma Collins, the place where her brother is buried near Kirby in Franklin County.

It is a place she has never stood, not even when her brother's funeral took place in July 1964.

That's because her family had already secretly sent her to Albany, La., worried that harm might come to her, too, she said.

She never knew how to determine the location of her brother's grave because he never had a headstone. "I've been wanting to put one up for him all these years, but I didn't know where he was buried," she said.

After walking into the cemetery in the Davis Hill community, she stood on the sunken grass and planted a flower for him.

"I know he's happy with us," she said. "I'm glad my brother can rest in peace."

Choking back tears, she said, "Brother, we did it."

-more at link-

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070616/NEWS/706160355

For those who would write off the South, we're still committed to justice, even if delayed. The wheels of justice may gind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine. I'm proud of Mississippi today.

Bake