(from Crosstar list)
****************
CROSS-EXAMINATION OF RITA SCHWERNER BENDER
Edgar Ray Killen had once told reporters that he did not believe in murder, but
he did believe in self-defense. His lawyers, however, did not believe in a political
defense and seemed incapable of mounting the argument that vigilante-justice against
Communist-invaders and lawless-insurrectionists was an act of self-defense. When
Rita Schwerner Bender was called as a witness, testifying outside the presence of
Killen, who was hospitalized, at the time, the cross-examination by James McIntyre
was weak, ineffective and incomplete. As soon as Killen was hauled out on a stretcher,
Richard Barrett called upon Attorney-general Jim Hood to call off the proceedings,
stating that "the trial is a sham, the prosecution is a travesty and the persecuti
on
is
intolerable." Judge Marcus Gordon held that the guar
antees of the Sixth Amendment
for a speedy trial and to be confronted by witnesses does not apply. Here is the
cross-examination, as it should have been, and answers, as they likely would
have been:
Lawyer: Where did you meet Michael Schwerner?
Rita Schwerner: At a CORE meeting in New York City.
Lawyer: That would have been in Greenwich Village?
Schwerner: Yes.
Lawyer: That area has been a hot-bed of Communist activity for many years, has
it not. as well as the headquarters of the Wobblies, Communist Party and various
other anarchist groups? Also, the Beatniks started there, I believe?
Schwerner: Yes.
Lawyer: Were most members of CORE Communist?
Schwerner: Yes.
Lawyer: Is CORE the same organization whose head, Roy Innis, tried to murder
a man over national television, on the "Geraldo" show?
Schwerner: Yes.
Lawyer: What was th
e objective of CORE?
Schwerner: They wanted to overthrow this country, a white, Anglo-Saxon nation,
which they felt stood in the
way of the one-world Marxist dream.
Lawyer: How did they plan to go about this?
Schwerner: Since 1917, they had called for violently overthrowing the country,
killing and hanging people. But, they believed that forcing the Negro in upon
society would weaken whites and let the country drop into their hands. It is laid
out in the Communist Party platform. Communists were the first to call for integration.
Lawyer: What role did the South play in all of this?
Schwerner: The South was the whitest area of the country. If it could be toppled
and replaced with a Republic of New Africa, the Red Flag would fly over America.
Lawyer: What nationality is the name "Schwerner"?
Schwerner: Jewish.
Lawyer: And what nationality are you?
Schwerner: Jewish. My ancestors came from Russia and were members
of the
Wobblies, who advocated killing people who stood in the way of Communism
back in the early Nineteen hundreds. The Palmer Raids stopped a lot of their
activity, until the Sixt
ies, when integrationist activity was resurrected, helped
by rulings of the Warren Supreme Court.
Lawyer: So, you married one of your own kind. Would that be a form of
segregation?
Schwerner: I suppose so.
Lawyer: But you practiced segregation, but did not want Americans to do
the same?
Schwerner: Being segregated and keeping blood pure has kept J*ws united
and solidified. We did not want others to have the same solidarity and unity.
J*ws practice a sort of "divide and conquer" strategy.
Lawyer: Is that the strategy of the Communist Party?
Schwerner: Of course. As Rabbi Stephen Wise once said, "Some call it
Communism, I call it Judaism." The founder of Communism, Karl Marx, was a
J*w. We are the only truly "international&quo
t; people. Our loyalty is never
to any
particular country.
Lawyer: What was the role of Schwerner's mother in the Communist Party?
Schwerner: She was one of the high-ranking officials in New York City.
Lawyer: What did she tell her so
n, Michael?
Schwerner: She taught him to always use the Negro as a wedge against whites
and she encouraged him to stir up "agitation" by Negroes. Michael fit
the
pattern of the "outside agitator" that Southerners were always hollering
against.
Lawyer: Schwerner's family was "segregated," as well?
Schwerner: They were all J*ws, yes.
Lawyer: Was CORE openly Communist?
Schwerner: It used words like "civil rights," "register to vote"
and "oppose
racism," but it left images of Marx out. The agenda was the same.
Lawyer: What is the Republic of New Africa?
Schwerner: That is the name of what many I worked with want
ed to rename the
South, after all the whites had been driven out or killed off. Since there were
so
many Negroes in the South, we knew it could happen, if the Negroes would simply
rise up, the way John Brown did, and kill all the whites.
Lawyer: Who were Michael's heroes?
Schwerner: Marx, Lenin, Castro, Mao, Trotsky, John Brown, Emma Goldman.
Lawyer
: Isn't Mao the one who said that "power comes from the barrel of a
gun?"
Schwerner: Yes.
Lawyer: Leon Trotsky, whose real name was Bronstein, was pretty violent,
wasn't he?
Schwerner: Yes and some of his cohorts wound up killing him, in the end.
Lawyer: Why John Brown and Emma Goldman?
Schwerner: Brown advocated killing white people, kind of a forerunner of the
Bolsheviks. Goldman called for killing everyone in authority.
Lawyer: Brown was killed by a young Robert E. Lee, because Brown was trying
to overthrow the government. Do you think that L
ee had any qualities, such as
courage and love of home and land, that might inspire others today, such as Edgar
Ray Killen?
Schwerner: Yes.
Lawyer: But, Michael wanted those with such qualities out?
Schwerner: Our idea was to register Negroes to vote, to vote for other Negroes,
to
get the whites out, whoever they were, wherever they were. If the Negroes did not
outnumber the whites, the object was to get judges to
draw districts to put Negroes
in, anyhow. If all else failed, well, you remember the riots.
Lawyer: Why did you feel that this would succeed?
Schwerner: When John Kennedy invaded Mississippi to install a Negro at the
white university and Lyndon Johnson sided with Martin Luther King against Ross
Barnett, we felt sure that our opportunity had arrived.
Lawyer: Did Michael journey to Mississippi alone?
Schwerner: Actually, there was a whole network of outside-agitators in place.
He reported to Bob Moses in Jackson. It
all was paid for by wealthy Communist
sympathizers across the country. Carl and Ann Braden were instrumental in
arranging the financing. They, also, financed Martin Luther King.
Lawyer: What did Michael do during his time in Mississippi?
Schwerner: He met with Negroes and tried to get them to defy the white man,
at every turn. He, especially, held up W.E.B. DuBois as a role-model for Negroes.
DuBois was a Communist, who finally went to Africa, calling for the
overthrow
of America. He, also, was active in the NAACP.
Lawyer: Would it be safe to say that Michael, Andrew Goodman and James
Chaney were seeking to overthrow the segregated government of Mississippi?
Schwerner: Certainly.
Lawyer: Would you think that some people might feel that it was appropriate to
defend themselves against such an invasion?
Schwerner: Yes.
Lawyer: Where?
Schwerner: In Neshoba County. Wherever they happened to be.
Lawyer: There are plent
y of places in the world were people, especially Negroes,
cannot vote. In Africa, there is even slavery, still. Did Michael ever discuss
going
to some other place to agitate?
Schwerner: No. He felt that toppling the South was the biggest and best thing
he
could do, at the time. Goodman, you know, said that whites were the worst devils
in the world, so defeating the devil would be the ultimate accomplishment.
Lawyer: "Devil" is a Christian term, but Goodman was not a Christian,
was he?
Schwerner:
No, both Goodman and Michael were J*ws. Chaney, who they picked
up, was a Negro.
Lawyer: I notice that Israelis, your people, claim that they have a right to defend
their territory against invasion by outsiders. Do you think that Mississippians
had
a similar right?
Schwerner: I hadn't thought of it that way, but I suppose so.
Lawyer: Now this Republic of New Africa, was it to be a "republican"
form of
government of the sort guaranteed by the Constitution?
Schwerner: It would be more like a tribal entity, more like Uganda or the Congo.
Lawyer: What about trials, due-process, constitutional rights and such as that?
Schwerner: We were not thinking about those things. We simply wanted
Negro-rule. "We shall overcome," you know.
Lawyer: And who exactly was to be overcome?
Schwerner: Whites.
Lawyer: Edgar Ray killen is quoted as saying that he did not believe in murder,
but he did believe in self-defense. Have you any quarrel with that?
Schwerner: No.
Lawyer:
Do you have any qualms about testifying against Killen, who is not
even being present in the courtroom?
Schwerner: Not really. Stalin and Ho Chi Minh put people on trial in absentia,
the same way.
Lawyer: I notice that your hair is cut very short, in a mannish, butch way. Is
that because of the heat here today?
Schwerner: No. This is to sho
w that I am a "feminist," in league with
Rosy
O'Donnell, K. D. Lang, Ellen DeGeneris and such as that.
Lawyer: What has lesbianism to do with all of that?
Schwerner: We believe in "equality" for all, well, actually, affirmative-action
to promote lesbians, homosexuals and others "left out" by the white man,
all
these years. Pushing the Negro in was just the first step. Then, the homosexuals,
then the Communists, outright.
Lawyer: Mississippi and America are strong Christian areas. Do you think that
many would regard Michael's and your own agenda as an assault on the morals,
principles and, even, freedom of this country?
Sc
hwerner: Yes. But we obviously do not care.
Lawyer: The goatee and beard that Michael wore, why was that?
Schwerner: It made him look like Lenin. He really expected to see the same kind
of bloodbath in the South as Lenin had unleashed in Russia, all for the good of
the caus
e.
Lawyer: Communism demands the mixing of all races and nationalities and
the abolition of all borders. But, you have remarried and your new husband is,
also, Jewish. So, you have not mixed.
Schwerner: True, we believe that bringing all the rest of humanity down to a single
level will avoid the opposition to us, which has plagued us throughout history.
So, our role is kind of like the Commissars under Communism. We are like the
captains of the big Red ship. Negroes are easier to keep in their place. That
is why there was slavery.
Lawyer: L. D. Smith was the young white soldier, killed in Vietnam by Negroes
for wearing a patch of a Confederate flag on his sleeve. Did Michael ever express
any sympat
hy for him?
Schwerner: No.
Lawyer: Senator James O. Eastland secured passage of the Anti-Riot Act of 1968,
which prohibited crossing state-lines to stir up riots. If that law had been in
place
in 1964, would Michael have ventured down to
Mississippi to stir up Negroes?
Schwerner: Probably not. He probably would have stayed in New York or, maybe,
as some of his family and friends have done, emigrated to Israel.
Lawyer: That's right, there is a "Law of Return," which beckons all J*ws
in the
world to go to Israel. Would you have any objection to having America be an
Anglo-Saxon, Christian country, the way Israel seeks to be a Jewish, Zionist country?
Schwerner: I'd prefer not to answer that.
Lawyer: What is a vigilante?
Schwerner: Someone who tries to remedy injustices that those in authority fail
to correct.
Lawyer: Were their any failings by government, back in 1964, that you recollect?
Schwerner: Yes, government had failed to keep Michael and others in jail o
r to
even
punish them, in any way. That was a failing.
Lawyer: What is treason?
Schwerner: That is the crime of trying to overthrow a country. Basically, it is
declaring w
ar on a country, from within the country, or war against an individual
state.
Lawyer: Can you envision that your husband, Michael, and his cohorts might have
been guilty of treason?
Schwerner: Perhaps, under some circumstances.
Lawyer: Are you familiar with the penalty for treason?
Schwerner: I believe it is the death-penalty.
Lawyer: And, would it be fair to say that had Michael, Goodman and Chaney remained
in jail they might still be alive, today, and vigilantes would not have felt the
need to take
the law into their own hands?
Schwerner: Yes.
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