And in Philadelphia, Mississippi, an ending of a totally different kind, altogether. This man, Edgar Ray Killen was found guilty of manslaughter. It was 1964. Three civil rights workers were murdered, shot in the dead of night, their bodies buried with a bulldozer. Take a look at them.
Killen, a former KKK member, was convicted of planning and organizing these men's killings. It was exactly 41 years ago today they were murdered. Let's just take a look at these pictures: James Cheney, there you see him in the middle, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. All in their early 20s. Combine their ages, they still would not be nearly as old as 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen.
Yesterday on the witness stand, the former mayor of Philadelphia, Mississippi was testifying as to the good character of Mr. Killen and he made a startling statement. He said, "the Ku Klux Klan was a peaceful organizati
on and did a lot of good."
Now, we
don't take sides on 360. We like to look at all of the angles, but we do care about facts. The truth does matter. So, earlier today I spoke with Philadelphia's former mayor, Harlan Majure.
COOPER: Why do you believe the Ku Klux Klan, at any time in their history, was a peaceful organization and did a lot of good?
MAJURE: Because when I was a small child in the mid-'30s and during the Depression years, my daddy worked at a little country store and made two or three dollars a day. At night, when he would come in from being at that store, he would say, well, the Klan was busy of the weekend. And he was not a member of the Klan. None of our family have ever been a member of the Klan. But he said they went by to see whoever -- so-and-so -- because if there was anybody in the community or the neighbors that would not take care of their family, too sorry to work or would waste their money and not take care of the wife and the children, the Klan
would pay them a visit. If there was somebody in the neighb
orhood that was messing around with somebody's house or somebody else's wife, the Klan would pay him a visit. And they visited more white people and they whipped more white people than they did black people, and this was, like I said, in the '30s.
COOPER: Are you kidding? Do you know that the U.S. Senate just apologized for their role in not preventing the lynchings of several thousand African-Americans going back more than 100 years -- 4,700 lynchings that happened from 1982 and 1968?
MAJURE: No. I'm not aware of that.
COOPER: You were a twice-elected official. Don't you have responsibility to be aware of the history, not only of your town and your -- but the country we live in? Shouldn't -- if you're going to make comments about the Ku Klux Klan, shouldn't you read some history books about it?
MAJURE: Well, I didn't plan to be making any comments about it. I was summoned to be up there
. I didn't believe even that the people were killed. I thought it was a publicity stunt until late
r on, while they were looking for them, the FBI and whoever else were having a search party, then I realized that it had actually happened, but I didn't believe it before that.
COOPER: You thought at the time that James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, that it was a publicity stunt?
MAJURE: Exactly. You're right. Uh-huh, and it should not have happened. I -- we were never in favor of that type of operation. We wasn't in favor of what they did coming down here, but certainly not killing anybody. That's wrong.
COOPER: You're saying they should not have been killed but they shouldn't have come down there?
MAJURE: Well, I'm saying that the people that were responsible for their death was the people that organized them, wherever, whatever towns they were in. I think, one of them, two of them, were from New York City. They should have been properly t
rained and expected more or less what you're come into and to change your tradition one summer that had been going to for hundreds and
maybe thousands of years. It just doesn't happen.
COOPER: I'm sorry, sir. I really try to be respectful of all my guests and I respect you and your position, but you just said that these three men who were murdered in the dead of night and buried in an unmarked grave and just abandoned and, you know, bulldozed over -- you said that the people who responsible for their deaths are the people who sent them there to do voter registration, not the actual people who pulled the triggers?
MAJURE: I say they were responsible for them without schooling them, without proper training them, without giving them proper protection when they come down here because they should have known they were coming into a hostile environment. It would have happened in any city and any state. Where are you? Where am I talking to you?
COOPER: Ah, New York City.
MAJURE
: All right, if I recruited a group of young people -- and I have two granddaughters that would be at the right age for that right now -- to go in and say,
we're going to clean up the drugs, the prostitution, the money-laundering, the gang wars and stuff like that, in the city of New York and we just going to move in and take over, because that stuff is illegal and it was when I was up there in the military -- do you think we'd see the sunrise the next morning if we went in there forcibly changing that?
COOPER: Sir, it's just sad that in this day and age you're comparing people who came down to try to help African-Americans who were living in your community and been there for hundreds of years, people who had the right to vote and couldn't vote and weren't being allowed to vote and weren't being allowed to sit at lunch counters -- you're comparing to people who came down to help those people to someone, like, trying to root out drug dealers and killers and rapists?
<b
r>MAJURE: No, I'm comparing the situation. They were uninvited. They should've -- we were making progress down here. It was slow and it wasn't at the speed that the federal govern
ment wanted and it wasn't at the speed that whoever these were that organized this wanted to.
COOPER: Well, whoever these were -- you know, the NAACP -- you say as if these three people came down were aliens from outer space. I mean, yes, two of them were from New York, but you know, James Chaney was from Meridian, Mississippi, and that's where my grandmother's from. That's where -- my dad was born in Quitman, not too far from where you are right now, and I've got to tell you, you know, what's wrong with someone from Meridian, Mississippi, an African-American, saying I want to be able to vote?
MAJURE: Not anything wrong with it as far as I'm concerned. The timing was bad and when we were more or less invaded, but it's just like I said, if I did the same thing in New York City,
they wouldn't see the sunrise and you know that.
COOPER: When was the right timing to give African-Americans the vote?
MAJURE: I don't have the answer to that question. There's no way I could.
COOPER: You t
estified that Mr. Killen is a good guy, basically. You were testifying to his character. Do you still think he's a good guy now that the jury has said he's responsible for manslaughter? MAJURE: Oh, this should not have happened. And evidently, he was probably part of it because I didn't hear the testimonies, but there's no way that you can answer all these questions that you asked because this is history and it was history in the making. They should have known they were going to run into a hostile situation when they came in, but they should not have been killed. I've never thought that. :
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