A US appeals court has overturned the conviction of a former Ku Klux Klansman jailed last year over the deaths of two black teenagers in Mississippi in 1964.
James Ford Seale, 72, was serving three life terms on charges of kidnapping and conspiracy over the deaths.


BBC NEWS | Americas | Ex-KKK man freed over 1964 deaths

__________________

I have a hard time with the KKK. Nothing but pure hate

__________________
this mod needs coffee

Poor fella, at least he has a couple years of freedom at his age and we must remember what times he lived in and how the south was back than.

off to read more about the case before I comment further.

i'm sorry i can't feel sympathy for a kkk member.

__________________
be nice to the people on your way up,because you will meet them again on your way down

Amazing the notoriously pro prosecution 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals . Found a "legal loop hole " via mental gymnastics For this Monster who as cop abused his power and hid from justice for years .Too bad they do not have the same compassion for the average appellant who has a solid case and might even be innocent . They very rarely rule in favor of a person who has been convicted even if they are innocent or thir rights where violated .
That speaks volumes for that court . Igues if youe a good ole KKK boy your free to go . But any one else well go right back to prison , actual proof of innocence is not good enough .
The south in the 50s and 60 is not a excuse to kill any one because of their race the guy should be lefty to t rot in prisn like every one else . I have zero sympathy for him and find it troubling the court "found " a way to set him free.
How very thoughtful of them. Now if only hey would do the same for far more deserving people .

__________________
If the storm doesn't kill me
the government will

REM

__________________
"Faith, Hope & Love, but the greatest of these is Love."
I Corinthians 13:13

I disagree with that .... there is nothing poor about him... he killed 2 teenagers simply because of the color of their skin. That is beyond heinous and in my opinion warrants the dp.

The Klu Klux Klan are nothing more than a racist, white supremest group who hate anyone who isn't 'pure white' quite similar to the 'Hitler' mentality....


His act of violence had nothing to do with the integration/ civil rights movement... it was purely based on racial hatred.

Many people lost their lives just to make change.... I see nothing poor about this old man. He should be left to rot in the geriatric ward in the infirmary.

__________________

I am against any type of prejudice, especially racial. How does the colour of skin define who you are? Sadly there are too many who believe the colour of you is enough to warrant hatred.

I am against the DP so I do not believe this man should have been executed but I do believe his sentence was correct. But law loopholes often get people off. The law is so strange and so wide that it will never be 100% safe.

Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is the name of several past and present secret domestic terrorist [2] organizations in the United States, generally in the southern states, that are best known for advocating white supremacy and acting as vigilantes while hidden behind conical masks and white robes. The first KKK arose in the turmoil after the Civil War. It utilized terrorism, violence, and lynching to intimidate and oppress African Americans, Jews, and Roman Catholics.

The first Klan was founded in 1865 by veterans of the Confederate Army. Its purpose was to restore white supremacy in the aftermath of the American Civil War. The Klan resisted Reconstruction by intimidating "carpetbaggers", "scalawags" and freedmen. The KKK quickly adopted violent methods. The increase in murders finally resulted in a backlash among Southern elites who viewed the Klan's excesses as an excuse for federal troops to continue occupation. The organization declined from 1868 to 1870 and was destroyed by President Ulysses S. Grant's prosecution and enforcement under the Civil Rights Act of 1871.

In 1915, the second Klan was founded. It grew rapidly in another period of postwar social tensions. After WWI, many Americans coped with booming growth rates in major cities, where numerous waves of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and the Great Migration of Southern blacks and whites were being absorbed.

After WWI, labor tensions rose as veterans tried to reenter the work force. In reaction to these new groups of immigrants and migrants, the second KKK preached racism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Communism, nativism, and anti-Semitism. Some local groups took part in lynchings, attacks on private houses and public property, and other violent activities.

Members used ceremonial cross burning to intimidate victims and demonstrate its power. Murders and violence by the Klan were most numerous in the South, which had a tradition of lawlessness.[3]

The name Ku Klux Klan has since been used by many independent groups opposing the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, they often acted with impunity by alliances with Southern police departments, as during the reign of Bull Connor in Birmingham, Alabama; or governor's offices, as with George Wallace of Alabama.[6]

Several members of KKK-affiliated groups were convicted of manslaughter and murder in the deaths of civil rights workers and children in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama, the assassination of NAACP organizer Medgar Evers, and the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. Today, researchers estimate there may be more than 150 Klan chapters with 5,000-8,000 members nationwide. The U.S. government classifies them as hate groups, with operations in separated small local units.

Klan members adopted masks and robes that hid their identities and added to the drama of their night rides, their chosen time for attacks. Many of them operated in small towns and rural areas where people otherwise knew each other's faces, and sometimes still recognized the attackers. "The kind of thing that men are afraid or ashamed to do openly, and by day, they accomplish secretly, masked, and at night." With this method both the high and the low could be attacked.[19] The Ku Klux Klan night riders "sometimes claimed to be ghosts of Confederate soldiers so, as they claimed, to frighten superstitious blacks. Few freedmen took such nonsense seriously."[20][21]

The Klan raided black members of the Loyal Leagues and intimidated southern Republicans and Freedmen's Bureau workers. When they killed black political leaders, they also took heads of families, leaders in churches and community groups, because people had many roles.

Ku Klux Klan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

__________________

The name "Ku Klux Klan" began to be used by several independent groups. Beginning in the 1950s, individual Klan groups began to resist the Civil Rights Movement by bombing houses in transitional neighborhoods and the houses of activists, as well as by physical violence, intimidation and assassination.

In Birmingham, Alabama, during the tenure of Bull Connor, Klan groups were closely allied with police and operated with impunity. There were so many bombings of homes by Klan groups that the city's nickname was "Bombingham". In states such as Alabama and Mississippi, Klan members had alliances with governors' administrations.[6]

Many murders went unreported and unprosecuted. Continuing disfranchisement of blacks meant that most could not serve on juries, which were all white.

According to a report from the Southern Regional Council in Atlanta, the homes of forty black Southern families were bombed during 1951 and 1952. Some were social activists whose work exposed them to danger, but most were either people who refused to bow to racist convention or were innocent bystanders, unsuspecting victims of random terrorism."[78]

Among the more notorious murders by Klan members:

• The 1951 Christmas Eve bombing of the home of NAACP activists Harry and Harriette Moore in Mims, Florida, resulting in both their deaths.[79]

• The 1957 murder of Willie Edwards, Jr. Klansmen forced Edwards to jump to his death from a bridge into the Alabama River.[80]

• The 1963 assassination of NAACP organizer Medgar Evers in Mississippi. In 1994, former Ku Klux Klansman Byron De La Beckwith was convicted.

• The 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four black girls. The perpetrators were Klan members Robert Chambliss, convicted in 1977, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry, convicted in 2001 and 2002. The fourth suspect, Herman Cash, died before he was indicted.

• The 1964 murders of three civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in Mississippi. In June 2005, Klan member Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter.[81]

• The 1964 murder of two black teenagers, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore in Mississippi. In August 2007, based on the confession of Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards, James Ford Seale, a reputed Ku Klux Klansman, was convicted. Seale was sentenced to serve three life sentences.[82] Seale was a former Mississippi policeman and sheriff's deputy.[83]

Violence at a Klan march in Mobile, Alabama, 1977

• The 1965 Alabama murder of Viola Liuzzo. She was a Southern-raised Detroit mother of five in the state to attend a civil rights march. At the time of her murder Liuzzo was transporting Civil Rights Marchers.

• The 1966 firebombing death of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer Sr., 58, in Mississippi. In 1998 former Ku Klux Klan wizard Sam Bowers was convicted of his murder and sentenced to life. Two other Klan members were indicted with Bowers, but one died before trial, and the other's indictment was dismissed.

__________________