Philadelphia, Miss. – Reputed Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen, 80, watched from a wheelchair Monday as jury selection began in his murder trial in the 1964 slayings of three voter-registration volunteers.
The slayings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner – three young men who were helping register blacks during the “Freedom Summer” of 1964 and were investigating a church burning the night they disappeared – galvanized the civil-rights movement and helped win passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Security was tight as about 110 potential jurors were brought to the county courthouse on buses. Another group is expected today.
Summonses went out to about 400 people.
Killen, a part-time preacher who has been free on bail, is in a wheelchair because of arthritis that was aggravated after his legs were broken in a tree-cutting accident in March.
FBI records and witnesses indicated that Killen organized the carloads of Klansmen who followed Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner and stopped them in their station wagon.
Chaney, a black man from Mississippi, and Schwerner and Goodman, white men from New York, were beaten and shot to death.
Their bodies were found 44 days later, buried in an earthen dam.
Opening statements could start Thursday.
