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  Susan Klopfer

  4 years ago

  So now, what?
  
  
  
  After Philadelphia, the collective unconscious closed their notebooks and left Mississippi for the next newsworthy battlegrounds. One hoped that Mississippi’s citizenry would wake up and put enormous pressure on the state’s attorney general to go after everyone else who killed Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman. But so far, it is not happening. The Mississippi culture would never allow it. Besides, "as long as we look better than we did before Killen was convicted, why start this mess all over again?" some were saying.
  
  
  
  Last January 7, 2005 New York Times reporter Robert McFadden wrote on the upcoming Killen trial - "The most infamous unresolved case from America's civil rights struggle four decades ago." McFadden wrote that "After a frantic chase, [Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman] were caught and taken to an isolated spot on Rock Cut Road, where they were killed:
  
  
  
  "Mr. Schwerner on Mr. Bowers's orders, and Mr. Chaney and Mr. Goodman because they were witnesses…Mr. Chaney was beaten to death, while Mr. Schwerner and Mr. Goodman were each shot once in the chest."
  
  
  
  McFadden seemed to be working through the question that many keep asking: "Why only Killen?" The NYT reporter asked this of one law enforcement officer and was told
  
  
  
  "We went ahead and got him [Killen] because he was high profile and we knew where he was." In other words, they went after Killen “because he was there.” So why not keep it up and go after the others now that Killen has been taken care of?
  
  
  
  McFadden continued: "Mississippi has reopened some [other] old civil rights murder cases. In 1994, Byron de la Beckwith was convicted of the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers, a field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People."
  
  
  
  This is true. Prosecutor Bobby DeLaughter did a good job. And in his book that he wrote about the Beckwith case, DeLaughter confirmed that others were involved in Medgar Evers death. (Something the black community already knew). But he brought no charges against anyone else. I write about this in Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited.

  As DeLaughter prepared to take Beckwith into court, "once again," an FBI agent told DeLaughter that Beckwith spoke to his cellmate at Angola (where Beckwith was serving a short sentence for a bombing) about a Klansman named “Smith” who ordered the Evers hit. (DeLaughter admitted that he knew who "Smith" really was.)
  
  
  
  While cooperating with the FBI on another case, Lester Paul Hockman, incarcerated in an undisclosed federal facility, told Agent Daniel Lund that he possessed critical information regarding Beckwith’s assassination of Medgar Evers, according to DeLaughter.
  
  
  
  Although Hockman had lived most of his life in another part of the country, his work as a carpenter had carried him to New Orleans, Louisiana. The report stated that in 1978 he was convicted and incarcerated for a shooting. Assigned for several weeks to clean the receiving unit at Angola Penitentiary, Hockman claimed to have met Beckwith, who was serving time on [a] New Orleans charge. Hockman told agent Lund that “Beckwith liked him because both were of German descent and talked freely to him.”
  
  
  
  Beckwith, Hockman said, frequently spoke of a person he greatly admired named Smith [not the real name]. Hockman recalled seeing the name on some of the Klan literature that Beckwith kept in his cell. “Smith,” according to Hockman’s account, ordered the hit on Evers, “as well as several bombings that resulted in the deaths of innocent people.”
  
  
  
  A member of DeLaughter’s trial team, “Crisco,” interviewed Hockman, who had convictions going back to 1945, at a federal penitentiary. Hockman confirmed to Crisco his statements in the FBI report “and then some,” DeLaughter wrote in “Never Too Late,” his personal account of his successful prosecution of Beckwith.
  
  
  
  Asking about Evers, Hockman said Beckwith told him he “never did anything in those days without Mr. Smith’s okay.” Hockman also stated that Beckwith said “the governor of the state at the time, whoever that was, assisted him greatly. He said he had a lot of local support, too; that two individuals, policemen I believe, provided him with a good alibi that he was in town some distance away, and he spoke of that as a joke.”

  Hockman never testified – DeLaughter won without him, and knew that Hockman might present problems. So once again, the easiest route was taken and the more complicated issues ignored.. But as far as DeLaughter and others would say, they "got" their man. Case closed.
  
  
  
  McFadden had more to write last January: "Efforts to bring about a trial for the murder of civil rights workers in Mississippi have been enhanced in recent years by the opening of the long-secret files of the State Sovereignty Commission, which was founded in 1956 to defend the state from "encroachment" by federal authorities.
  
  
  
  "Before it was abolished in 1977, the commission monitored anyone suspected of promoting racial integration. Containing 87,000 names, the files detail a series of Klan killings in the 1960's, including those of Mr. Evers and Mr. Dahmer, as well as those of Mr. Schwerner, Mr. Chaney and Mr. Goodman."
  
  
  
  Now we all know that a whole lot of those papers are missing. It was decided to take a few truckloads (what was left) out of the Commission's offices and post them on the Internet. And this was good. But what about all of the missing Sovereignty Commission papers? Who has them? Who threw them away? Has anyone even tried to look for these papers? Would this be too hard to do? Wouldn't there be more information in these missing files to help solve old murders? Wouldn't it have been the "worst" files that were pitched or hidden?
  
  
  
  Erle Johnston, the most powerful Sovereignty Commission director, in his autobiography admitted to taking some of the papers home, and making sure they would never see the light of day? Has his house been searched? Any relatives still living? Kids with big garages?
  
  
  
  A few cop cars out to the homes [estates] of John Satterfield, Senator "Slippery Jim" Eastland, and some of the others, including the Commission’s agents, would be a good start. And really not too hard to do. As for Killen, the easy part is over. Now it's time to get down and dirty. The best could be yet to come.
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