Edgar Ray Killen

Edgar Ray Killen
U.S. Government workers, Federal Bureau of Investigation workers · Public domain · source
Name	Edgar Ray Killen
Birth date	17 January 1925
Birth place	Philadelphia, Mississippi, U.S.
Death date	11 January 2018
Death place	Parchman, Mississippi, U.S.
Occupation	Baptist minister, sawmill operator
Known for	Organizing the Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner
Criminal charge	Manslaughter
Criminal penalty	60 years' imprisonment
Criminal status	Deceased

Edgar Ray Killen. Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen was an American white supremacist and part-time Baptist minister who was convicted in 2005 for orchestrating the 1964 Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. His trial and conviction, coming over four decades after the crime, became a landmark case in the pursuit of justice for Civil Rights Movement-era crimes and symbolized a long-delayed reckoning with the violent history of Mississippi's Citizens' Council and Ku Klux Klan networks.

Early life and background

Edgar Ray Killen was born in 1925 in Neshoba County, Mississippi, a region with a deeply entrenched history of racial segregation and Jim Crow laws. He worked primarily as a sawmill operator and was ordained as a part-time Baptist minister, a position he used to lend moral authority to his extremist views. Killen was a known and active member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a particularly violent faction of the Klan that operated in Mississippi during the 1960s. His background was typical of many local men who joined the Ku Klux Klan and Citizens' Councils, viewing the burgeoning Civil rights movement as a direct threat to the Southern social order. This environment of organized, church-sanctioned white supremacy provided the foundation for his later actions.

Role in the Mississippi civil rights workers' murders

In the summer of 1964, during the Freedom Summer voter registration drive, three civil rights workers—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner—were investigating the burning of a Black church in Neshoba County. On June 21, 1964, they were arrested by Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price on a pretext and held in the Philadelphia jail. Upon their release after dark, they were ambushed. Evidence and testimony from later trials established that Edgar Ray Killen, acting as a local Klan "kleagle" or organizer, was the chief architect of the plot. He recruited the mob, coordinated the logistics, and directed the Ku Klux Klan members to intercept and murder the three men. The victims were shot, and their bodies were buried in an earthen dam. The case, often referred to as the "Mississippi Burning" murders, drew national outrage and became a pivotal moment in the struggle for voting rights and federal intervention in the South.

Trial and conviction

Despite a 1967 federal trial of 18 men, including Killen, on charges of conspiring to violate the civil rights of the victims, an all-white jury deadlocked in Killen's case after one juror said she could not convict a preacher. He walked free for nearly 40 years. The case was reopened in 2004 by the Mississippi Attorney General's office, spurred by journalists and activists, as part of a broader effort to re-examine unsolved civil rights-era murders. In 2005, Killen was tried in state court in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The prosecution, led by District Attorney Mark Duncan and Attorney General Jim Hood, presented evidence including testimony from the 1967 trial. On June 21, 2005—the 41st anniversary of the murders—a racially mixed jury convicted the 80-year-old Killen on three counts of manslaughter, finding he had organized the killings but stopping short of a murder conviction. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison, effectively a life sentence. The conviction was a historic moment, marking the first time the state of Mississippi had secured a conviction for the infamous crime.

Connection to broader civil rights movement

The murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner and the long-delayed prosecution of Killen are deeply intertwined with the history of the Civil rights movement. The crime galvanized public support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and helped pave the way for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by highlighting the lethal resistance to change in the Deep South. Killen represented the nexus of white supremacy, organized Ku Klux Klan terror, and complicity by local law enforcement. His eventual conviction was a direct result of the persistent work of the civil rights community, families of the victims, and journalists, demonstrating that the quest for justice for racially motivated crimes does not expire. It also reflected a shift in the Southern legal landscape, influenced by earlier prosecutions like that of Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of Medgar Evers.

Later life and death

Edgar Ray Killen served his sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. He maintained his innocence and showed no public remorse, appealing his conviction unsuccessfully. His health declined in prison. Killen died of respiratory failure on January 2018 at the prison hospital on January 11,