JACKSON, Miss.-
Generational differences are evident during jury selection for the trial of a reputed Klansman charged with kidnapping and conspiracy in the 1964 slayings of two black teenagers in southwest Mississippi.
Many of the potential jurors who appear to have been born after the crime took place 43 years ago say the only things they know about the Ku Klux Klan are what they’ve seen in movies or read in high school textbooks. And many of them—black and white—say they haven’t had negative experiences with people of another race.
“It seems like my generation is a little bit different than previous generations. There’s not as much racism in my generation,” one white woman who appeared to be in her 20s or 30s told attorneys Friday, the third day of jury selection.
Some of those who lived during the turbulent era of state-enforced segregation are giving different insight into their backgrounds.
One black woman who appeared to be in her 40s told attorneys Friday that her family had moved away from Mississippi when she was young “to get away from racism” and she said she’s not sure she could give James Ford Seale a fair trial “simply because of the racism and the group he belongs to or may belong to.”
Seale, 71, has denied membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Court documents filed by prosecutors say he was part of the white supremacist group that terrorized people in southwest Mississippi during the 1960s.
Seale could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted of kidnapping and conspiracy in the deaths of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, both 19.
Court records say Dee and Moore were picked up while hitchhiking on May 2, 1964, and were beaten by Klansmen and dumped, still breathing, into the Mississippi River. Their bodies were found two months later during the massive manhunt for three civil-rights workers who had disappeared from central Mississippi’s Neshoba County.
Seventy-eight people from across south Mississippi reported for jury duty this week, and the pool was down to 38 by Friday evening.
Lawyers are going through a detailed series of questions to try to choose a dozen people, and a yet-unannounced number of alternates. U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate says he hopes to start testimony on Monday, but attorneys said jury selection might stretch into the middle of next week.
Wingate is keeping jurors’ names secret at the request of prosecutors who said some people might fear to serve in a case involving the Klan.
Seale and Charles Marcus Edwards, another reputed Klansman, were charged in 1964 in the deaths of Dee and Moore, but local authorities threw out those charges.
The Justice Department reopened an investigation in 2000. The FBI closed the case again in 2003 only to reopen it in 2005. Edwards has been granted immunity and prosecutors say he will testify against Seale.
Charles Moore’s brother, Thomas Moore, 63, of Colorado Springs, Colo., and one of Dee’s sisters, Thelma Collins, 70, of Springfield, La., have been in the courtroom watching jury selection.
