Christopher Santiago's List: Gladwell

• 2010,   in Justice,   by Jerry Mitchell

  • Jerry Mitchell has been following the Chaney Murder for at least ten years.
• Ben Greenberg

  • This article is kinetically different from Mitchell's earlier work.  He has either grown more editorial or Greenberg is unfortunately limiting Mitchell's creativity.  Mitchell doesn't delve into sources as much but his opinion does shine through; just confess.
• Edgar Ray Killen says there wasn’t enough legal evidence to imprison him

  • There is a difference between saying there is not enough evidence and I'm innocent.
• “Almighty God … is listening and is recording your acts, thoughts and deeds.

  • Does he invoke God's name because he feels no guilt?  Does he believe he has done right?  Does he still argue he did not have a role in the murders?
• Attorney General Jim Hood prosecuted Killen, responded, “I don’t have any trouble standing before God with my role in it.”
• three counts of manslaughter

  • He wasn't convicted of murder.  Do we pity him in his old age?  Should we?
• maximum 60 years in prison.
• he’s still trying to blame somebody else

  • "I was just following orders" doesn't work when it comes from the man issuing orders.
• from from

  • Grammatical errors do exist in the professional world; they are unsightly.
• Philip Dray
• he’s not surprised Killen invoked God’s name since the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi often did that.
• “Convicted Klansmen have a special problem with justice,” he said. “Their ‘crimes’ were, in their minds, righteous.

  • Milgram's experiment echos maliciously here.  They believe they did right.  Our culture deems them monsters, but can we be so quick to judge?  How is this different from shocking someone in the name of science?

•  

  In Killen’s mind, he said, “It will always be 1865.”
• Cole Thornton, Imperial Wizard of the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

  • The KKK is a lifelong strong-tie.  The Civil Rights Movement battled, and in some ways are still battling, an enemy just as formidable as they themselves are.
• The fact is he refuses to look at reality.

  • The KKK can't be related to because they don't function on the same level as society.  Ben Chaney stands as someone who has been directly victimized by them and yet offers pity.  Even so he condemns they're actions and still wants justice for his brother.
• “God knows what he did, and he knows he did something contrary to what God wants.

  • The Milgram experiment shows how men can do horrible things if they believe it is right.  Can we condemn their actions?  All we can do is pity their delusion and inform them they're wrong.
• The truth will set him free.

  • Mitchell again ends with Ben Chaney.  He casts Chaney as a forgiving figure.  He can only be viewed as admirable when juxtaposed so closely with the stubborn paranoia of Killen.  

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• One suspect

  • Edgar Killan: chooses not to mention he didn't face the charge until 2005.
• faced

  • Note: He faced murder charges.  He was not convicted.
• Jerry Mitchell

  • Wrote the Autopsy piece seven years prior to this article.  He is avidly involved and never satisfied with the Chaney case.
• Billy Wayne Posey

  • Article split into Klan members he has interviewed.
• Meridian

  • Meridian is James Chaney's hometown.  His murderers never left.  They have no shame.
• Four years

  • Only.
• admitted
• experts say

  • Mitchell vaguely quotes "experts."  He is most likely giving his own opinion and veiling it as he is a "journalist."  He is disgusted by the Klan members and wants his scorn to be apparent.
• Posey has admitted

  • There is a grim pattern of how much Posey admits to doing.
• “Oh, good, we have been looking for Schwerner,” Killen replied.

  • Now I can find out why Schwerner was so important to Killen.
• Posey has admitted
• That statement, however, can’t be used against him in state court.

  • Despite how much Posey has admitted to, getting closer and closer to murder with each utterance.  Mitchell escalates the action and stonewalls it here in order to deem the law system ineffective.
• What can be admitted
• Price ordered them to get in his car.

  • Why didn't they just run: this ties into Milgram's experiment.  Despite the boys earlier run in with Price and his trumped up charges, they still listened to authority.
• Age: 73

  • They have lived their entire lives already.
• Federal time: None

  • And some have done so without repercussion.
• He said he and Harris met in May 1964 in a restaurant near Laurel with Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers, who headed the White Knights.

  • They met in person.  Although this particular situation doesn't involve recruitment, there is definitely a strong-tie being formed between Jordan and Harris.  Sam Bowers also acts as an authority figure, another link to the Milgram experiment.
• Schwerner was “a thorn in the side of everyone living, especially the white people and that he should be taken care of.”

  • Mitchell is building Schwerner's mystery and interest.  Why is he targeted so venomously.
• it was a job to be proud of

  • They do not see what they did as evil.  They know it is something they can get in trouble for, hence urging silence, yet they certainly see nothing wrong with what they have done.
• Jimmy Arledge

  • The article recounts the murder over and over again from the perspective of the Klan members without any intercession by Mitchell.  He expressed his contempt succinctly at the beginning and now he delves into the minds of horrifying men.  He is seeing and reseeing the events over and over again from every angle he can find. 
• “This was the first time I realized that the three civil rights workers were to be killed.”

  • They came "only" to beat the activists; they were persuaded by authority figures to kill them.  The applications to Milgram's experiment is numerous but should be observed with caution.  I refer to the experiment by radio lab's definition: Each member of the Klan is still wholly accountable for their actions.
• After Price turned on his red lights,

  • Mitchell repeats this part of the story.  It adds a constancy between stories and adds credibility to the whole.
• “Sir, I know just how you feel,” Schwerner replied.
• city policeman
• “Hell, I’ve got a dam that’ll hold a hundred of them.”

  • He ends with a horrifying quote.  Burrage shows enthusiasm rather than guilt.  Abumrad was right; it is a much darker fact people do bad things if they think it is for the right reason.

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• Like the photograph of Emmett Till two generations ago, the picture of James Chaney horrifies and outrages.

  • Note another reference to Emmett Till.  He is a potent symbol of the horror racism is capable of.
• That picture suggests he may have suffered other trauma to the groin area that white activists, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, did not.

  • James Chaney was the only black man among the three murdered.  His additional injuries indicate he was specifically targeted.  The prejudice seems apparent.
• In 1967, jurors in the federal trial in connection with the deaths never saw this evidence,

  • Why not?  Does a transcript of the trial still exist?
• Informed of Chaney's injuries, juror Nell Dedeaux gasped. "It's the first I've heard of that," said Dedeaux,
• It is evidence that could be used for the first time in court if authorities are successful in bringing the first-ever murder charges against those involved in the Klan killings

  • Mitchell wrote this article in 2000 and is actively pursuing what he believes is justice.  Edgar Ray Killan faces murder charges for the death of these three boys in 2005.  That knowledge makes the article seem a little sweeter.
• Yet few stunned the nation more than the trio's slayings near Philadelphia, in part because of the massive manhunt before the bodies were found, in part because two of the victims were white.
• No one was ever charged with murder.
• experts now agree with what a second opinion then suggested

  • Here is an excellent example of how necessary looking again is.  
• the injuries to Chaney have been blamed on the bulldozer the FBI used to exhume the bodies of the trio, buried 15 feet beneath an earthen dam.
• Featherston said. "He was the last one to be buried. He was the one who suffered most of the injury due to disinterment."
• That's not true,

  • Facts should be doubted.
• First of all, he said, Chaney's body was buried first and uncovered last.
• "It's kind of hard to break two arms and not crush the rest of the body," Burton said.
• With Featherston insisting a bulldozer caused the damage, the issue was never raised in court

  • No one doubts the expert.
• Featherston testimony

  • The article is split into episodic sections.
• "No, sir," Featherston replied. "I also don't know if they were hit by lightning, bit by a rattlesnake or maybe by some other cause of death."

  • Cases are typically won not by truth but by confidence.  Featherston effectively demonstrates he has no idea what happened to the boys.  Perhaps doubt arises around the wrong issues?
• "It was obvious to any first-year medical student that this boy had been beaten to a pulp," Spain wrote in Mississippi Eyewitness.
• his conclusions became little more than a historical footnote.
• confessions from two participants — James Jordan and Horace Doyle Barnette.
• After Neshoba County Deputy Cecil Price released Schwerner
• Price struck Chaney

  •  Police possess power and the legitimate authority to implement that power. A weak-tie would not be able to confront a social system that approves of murderous law officers. 
• Price's car
• conspiring to deprive the trio of their civil rights
• Philip Dray, co-author of the 1988 book about the killings, We Are Not Afraid, said what dumbfounds him about the suggestion Chaney was beaten is Klansmen were angrier with Schwerner:
• "He was the one they really, really hated."

  • Why? The klan members are mostly free men.  Has anyone done interviews with them?  Certainly strong-tie connections don't only exist in the Civil Rights movement.  The KKK must have had them too.
• That coincides with Jordan's statement Chaney died perhaps 40 feet away from where Schwerner and Goodman were killed.

  • The hidden part of the puzzle doesn't appear until the end of the article. Chaney is focused on simply because he was black, but here it is revealed he was brutally attacked because he simply wanted to live.
• Viewing the autopsy photo of his brother rekindled memories of another picture Ben Chaney saw as a child,

  • The article begins and ends with a comparison to Emmett Till, a boy who died needlessly.  Poignantly, the Chaney's brother is cited to have made the connection, adding an emotional pathos to the entire article.
• the badly beaten body of Emmett Till, a black Chicago youth killed by two white men in Money, Miss., in 1955 after he supposedly whistled at a white woman.
• They just snuffed his life out

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