Jackson, Miss. – A reputed Ku Klux Klansman accused in the 1964 slayings of two black men pleaded not guilty Thursday, and in a measure of how things have changed across the South, the judge he stood before was a black woman.
With his wrists and ankles shackled, 71-year-old James Ford Seale repeatedly addressed the judge as “ma’am,” a social courtesy whites typically denied to blacks in Mississippi 43 years ago.
Seale was arrested Wednesday on federal charges of kidnapping and conspiracy. Prosecutors said Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both 19, were seized and beaten by Klansmen, then thrown into the Mississippi River to drown.
A second white man suspected in the attack, reputed KKK member Charles Marcus Edwards, 72, has not been charged. People close to the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity said Edwards was cooperating with authorities.
Seale and Edwards were arrested in 1964. But the FBI – consumed by the search for three civil rights workers who had disappeared that same summer – turned the case over to local authorities, who threw out all charges.
The U.S. Justice Department reopened the case in 2000. But it was not until a few years ago that authorities realized Seale was still alive.
“Forty years ago, the system failed,” FBI Director Robert Mueller said in Washington. “We in the FBI have a responsibility to investigate these cold- case, civil rights-era murders where evidence still exists.”
Seale was jailed while awaiting a bail hearing Monday. His trial is scheduled for April 2.
