Believe that White people didn't go killing Black people in Black neighborhoods before integration.
Believe that White cops weren't offing Black folk in the segregation era.
Believe that integration has meant moving physically "closer" to White people than the segregation days.
I'll steal this from a facebook page:
"So why the heck did Donald Trump Jr. just speak at the Neshoba County Fair? There is a CLEAR background to why Trump sent a message to his supporters with this appearance...and it's all about what happened in Neshoba in 1964 and the huge symbol it has remained to White Nationalists ever since.
In the 1960s, only 5% of the Black population of Mississippi was registered to vote. The Mississippi Constitution and intense social pressure mediated out by the Ku Klux Klan and others, made it virtually impossible for Black persons to vote in the state.
In 1964, the Congress Of Racial Equality set up “freedom schools” to attempt to increase voting rights for Black persons.
May 1964: Three CORE workers (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner) spoke at Mount Zion Methodist Church in Neshoba County regarding a freedom school.
June 1964: The KKK in Neshoba County burned the church to the ground and beat its members in an attempt to lure the CORE workers back to Neshoba County. (That summer alone, the Mississippi KKK was involved in at least 41 shootings, 80 beatings, and 68 firebombings.)
June 21, 1964: Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner returned to Neshoba County to investigate the burning of the church. They were pulled over for “speeding” by a sheriff’s deputy, who then took them to jail. At night they were released, but were trailed by that deputy, local police, and the KKK. The three men were forced onto a secluded road, stopped, and shot to death. The bodies were buried with a bulldozer in an earthen dam at the home of one of the KKK members, a former US Marine who claimed he had “room for 100 more of them”. After the murder and burial, the sheriff’s deputy leading the effort gave this speech:
“Well, boys, you've done a good job. You've struck a blow for the white man. Mississippi can be proud of you. You've let those agitating outsiders know where this state stands. Go home now and forget it. But before you go, I'm looking each one of you in the eye and telling you this: "The first man who talks is dead!”
June/July 1964: The three men had been reported missing almost immediately, as the danger to their lives in the area had been known. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was reluctant as he opposed the Civil Rights Movement, but AG Robert Kennedy ordered 150 federal agents to investigate and president Lyndon Johnson used threats to force Hoover to cooperate.
A huge search was made, involving hundreds of Navy and FBI personnel. During the search, the bodies of EIGHT Black men who had been lynched and hidden in the area were found – two college students (who had been tortured, beaten, and then drowned alive by White men who had mistaken them for civil rights activists), a 14-year-old boy, and five bodies which could not be identified. None of their cases, of course, had attracted this attention.
Local authorities across Mississippi mocked the searchers and the investigation. The sheriff of Neshoba County (who had shot and killed an unarmed black motorist five years earlier but was never tried) claimed, "They're just hiding and trying to cause a lot of bad publicity for this part of the state." The governor of Mississippi suggested that the workers "could be in Cuba".
The workers’ bodies were finally found 44 days after the search started due to a tip provided by an anonymous highway patrolman who was friends with the head of the FBI investigation. State authorities refused to press charges against any of the suspected murderers.
November 1964: With Mississippi refusing to file murder charges, the federal government charges 21 men who had taken part in planning or executing the murder with "violations of their civil rights (via murder)". Those charged included the sheriff, one of his deputies, two city police officers, a pastor, and the Imperial Wizard of the Mississippi KKK.
Six days later, a U.S. Commissioner in Mississippi dismissed all the charges, claiming that the confession on which they were based was “hearsay.”
December 1964: A federal grand jury indicts the men or civil rights violations.
February 1965: A federal judge in Mississippi (and hardcore segregationist who had referred to Black people as “baboons” from the bench) threw out the charges on everyone except the sheriff and his deputy, claiming that the other men couldn’t be charged with civil rights violations because they were not acting “under the color of the law”.
March 1966: The U.S. Supreme Court throws out the judge’s decision and brought the charges back yet again.
April 1966: Defense attorneys claim that there wasn't enough minorities in the original pool of jurors (possibly the most insanely cynical argument they could have made) and force the federal government to toss out the grand jury indictment.
February 1967: The federal government summons a new grand jury and gets indictments yet again.
October 1967: The trial is held under the authority of the same segregationist judge who had thrown out the charges in 1965. 12 White people were selected as jurors, with all 17 potential Black jurors being thrown out on peremptory charges by the defense attorneys. Despite one White juror admitting that he’d been a member of the KKK at the time of the killings, the judge denied the prosecution’s attempt to have him tossed “for cause”. The star witness, one of the shooters who had confessed in exchange for a plea deal, got repeated death threats and had to be hospitalized for a mental breakdown. Despite all this, 7 men were convicted of civil rights violations and sentenced to 3-10 years in prison. Two others had the jury deadlocked and were not retried despite multiple witness testimonies indicting them. The other 9 men were found not guilty.
During the trial, two of the co-defendants ran against each other for the position of sheriff of Neshoba County, replacing a third co-defendant who had served his term. The winner of the race was found not guilty despite strong evidence against him and became the new Neshoba County Sheriff after the trial.
None of the men found guilty ended up serving more than six years in prison. The deputy who had shot and killed the first two men only served 4.5 years.
Despite the convictions and clear evidence provided at trial, the state of Mississippi continued to refuse to press murder charges against any of the men.
1973: The Mississippi government finally closes down the work of the “Mississippi Sovereignty Commission”, a state institution which for the previous 17 years had spied on civil rights organizations, diverted money to pro-segregation causes, worked to manipulate the media in favor of pro-segregation views, and distributed literature in support of segregation.
August 3, 1980: Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan holds a campaign event at the Neshoba County Fair, just miles from the murders, and makes a call for “states’ rights” (evoking the segregationists), and against “giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federal establishment”, which many saw as a clear reference to support for Mississippi and against the FBI in the controversy. Reagan did not mention civil rights at any point during the speech. This was one of many instances in which Reagan employed the “Southern Strategy” of using code-words and allusions to woo White racists.
1988: The federal judge who had presided over the case died. He had said about the murderers, "They killed one ******, one Jew, and a white man.” This judge (who had also blocked the federal government’s attempt to stop Mississippi from prosecuting a Black man who had been beaten up in the process of trying to vote) had continued to serve as senior judge on the federal court in Mississippi all the way up through 1988.
1989: On the 25th anniversary of the murders, U.S. Senator for Mississippi Trent Lott and the rest of Mississippi’s congressmen refused to vote for a non-binding resolution honoring the three civil rights workers who had died.
1998: One of the former co-defendants, the founder of Mississippi’s White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, is finally convicted of the 1966 murder of another civil rights activist after two 1960s trials had resulted in deadlocked juries. He would serve 8 years in prison before dying.
2004: A high school teacher and three of his students make a documentary about the case that brings publicity against one of the men who had never been convicted in the original federal trials. Many civil rights activists across Mississippi demanded that the case be opened.
January 2005: A Mississippi grand jury indicts that conspirator for three counts of murder. He was accused of being the man who planned and directed the murders. It was the first time in the over forty years since the murders that the state of Mississippi had brought any charges whatsoever against any of the men.
June 2005: The 80-year-old man is convicted of three counts of manslaughter and sentenced to three consecutive 20-year-terms.
2007: The Mississippi Supreme Court rejects his final appeal, which was based on the claim that “no jury of my peers” would ever have convicted him in 1964.
2007: Another KKK member and former police officer is finally convicted of the kidnapping of Henry Dee and Charles Moore, the two Black college students whose bodies had been found during the search for the three civil rights workers. The KKK member was one of two suspects had been picked up and confessed to the murders in 1964, but federal authorities had dropped the case and state authorities (some of whom were allegedly complicit in the murders) refused to investigate. He had also been suspected in at least two other KKK-related murders and other beatings. The other suspect from 1964 was given immunity in exchange for his willingness to testify against the primary kidnapper/murderer. It was only a Canadian television documentary shining new light on the case that caused the prosecution to finally occur 40+ years later. No such prosecution has occurred for the murderers of the other six bodies found during the search for the White men.
2008: The families of Dee and Moore sue Franklin County, Mississippi, alleging that county officials had been complicit in their sons’ murders. The county settles with the families two years later for an undisclosed amount.
2008: A historical marker is placed at the site of the civil rights worker murders by the state of Mississippi. The marker is vandalized and has to be rededicated in 2013.
2011: A statewide Mississippi poll finds that 46% of Republicans feel that interracial marriage should be banned by law. Only 6% of White males in Mississippi describe themselves as Democrats.
2011: Hattisburg Mayor Johnny DuPree makes history as the first Black man to be nominated by a major party for a statewide office in Mississippi in over 120 years. Despite having a 37% Black population, Mississippi hadn’t even had a Black nominee for senate or governor before DuPree won the Democratic nomination for governor (and promptly lost the election 61% to 39%). Many Democrats had urged DuPree not to run as they felt that his presence as a Black man on top of the Democratic ticket in the state could hurt their chances in other races.
April 5, 2016: A Hispanic woman in Tupelo, Mississippi is evicted from her home for being married to a Black man, by a landlord who claims “interracial couples are a big problem with the members of the church.” Due to Mississippi’s recently passed pro-discrimination laws, supposedly “anti-religious discrimination” laws meant to allow Christians to refuse services to gay people, it is likely that there is no recourse for the woman.
May 17, 2016. A federal court orders Cleveland, Mississippi to desegregate its schools, 62 years after the Supreme Court decision banning school segregation. School officials continue to fight the decision.
June 2016: The Mississippi Attorney General closes the case because everyone relevant is now dead. Only 1 of the 21 men involved in the murder had ever been tried by the state.
July 2016: Donald Trump Jr. speaks at the Neshoba County Fair, reminding the crowd of Ronald Reagan's appearance in 1980 and voicing support for the continued flying of the Confederate Flag."
Cape for segregation Coli brehs.
