Note by Hunterbear:
This may be a cool Sunday in Eastern Idaho -- but some very current
Mississippi matters are much at hand in our bailiwick. With those on my
mind, I'm inclined to post these notes from the Meridian newspaper which,
coincidentally, have just come:
This is a forward from a friend in Mississippi -- simply two more [and
bitter] notes in the still on-going drama revolving around the murder of the
three very young civil rights workers on June 21,1964 in Neshoba County:
Mickey Schwerner [NYC], James Chaney [Meridian, MS], Andy Goodman [NYC]. In
those days, Neshoba was one of the most completely Klan-dominated of the
Mississippi counties. The three were murdered by a group of Klansmen
[Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan], which included the chief
deputy of the Neshoba County Sheriff's Office, Cecil Price. Considerable
evidence indicated active complicity by then "High" Sheriff Lawrence A.
Rainey and, with a number of others, he was indicted by the Feds under the
"conspiring to deprive [the three victims] of their civil rights." A famous
photo of their December '64 Federal arraignment at Meridian [in neighboring
Lauderdale County] shows Price and Rainey sitting, grinning in the
courtroom -- while Rainey stuffs himself with Red Man chewing tobacco.
Price, Sam Bowers [the Klan Wizard] and others did wind up being eventually
convicted in a Federal trial at Meridian and served several years in Federal
prison -- but Rainey was acquitted.
Things never went well for any of them. Rainey wound up in a series of
declining-status positions [security guard at a Meridian store, etc] and, a
few months ago, Price fell off a ladder at Philadelphia and died. Rainey
died of cancer last month and Mrs. Rainey is bitter. Sid Salter, the
journalist, and I know one another well -- occasionally we're adversaries
and mostly not. He usually finds it necessary to preface any story about me
with the statement that we are "no relation." [Even though I did a legal
name change seven years ago, everyone in Mississippi -- friend and foe --
still views me as John Salter, Jr.] Many years ago, Sid took over the Scott
County Times -- owned on a long-time basis by the late Erle Johnston of
Forest, a most deadly enemy of mine in the Old Days but one who became an
early moderate at some considerable risk to himself when things were still
very bad -- and then, from the beginning of the 1980s, a friend until his
death in '95. Sid Salter -- now running the paper and publishing a popular
state-wide column as well -- and I do have some things in agreeable common.
Rainey, from Philadelphia, had started out as a "lawman" in small-town
Canton, Mississippi -- about 60 miles away, seat of Madison County,
and just north of Jackson. I was
involved substantially in Canton as a civil rights worker -- and that town
was as bad as anything in the state. Blacks were frequently murdered there
"under color of law." During my first or second visit to the town, in '61, a
little white man was pointed out to me who had killed five Blacks. I recall
he looked at us with considerable distaste. Canton and Philadelphia often
worked closely together and had a common tie through L.A. Rainey and others.
One of my Madison County license plates [Oct. 63] is on the lower end of the
front page of our website www.hunterbear.org The Madison County sheriff, a
brutally violent racist in his own right, Billy Noble, hated to give me the
license plate -- and his clerk, a tough little old lady in Western clothes
who chain-smoked didn't want to, either -- but in the end the sheriff, with
his chief deputy Jack Cauthen, finally shrugged and she reluctantly handed
it to me under the window bars after I gave her the cash [which she
carefully counted twice.]
Eldri was waiting outside in our car, parked in front. Later, friends in
Canton and Jackson gave me pure hell for going from Tougaloo to Canton and
then into the Madison Co. Sheriff's office by myself -- with no one other
than Eldri knowing that I had. You can see the courthouse and the adjoining
Sheriff's Department and some scenes of Canton in the film of several years
ago, A Time To Kill [from the John Grisham novel.]
Mississippi has never brought murder charges -- no statute of limitations on
that, of course -- against any of the Neshoba killers. The present state
AG, Mike Moore, would like to -- but the death of Price and now Rainey are
seen as major setbacks. My own hunch is that it could be tough to get a
jury conviction in Neshoba. We know the county -- and my 20 year old
grandson, Tom, who with his mother [my daughter, Maria, born in Jackson in
early '62] and sister live here with us, is one-half Mississippi Choctaw
[Neshoba and adjoining Leake County.]
I have several times visited the site in the piney woods of Neshoba
County -- right off the road to Meridian -- where the three kids were lined
up at night and shot to death. The murder setting is consistently
characterized by a strange, dead silence -- even though nearby birds and
squirrels and other critters are busy. In the old days, well into the 1980s,
"KKK" was marked on the roads and signs in Neshoba -- but those are now
gone. The bitter issues remain both in the county and across the state --
and in those parts of the nation where we remember.
A genuinely excellent book on Philadelphia, Neshoba County, the Klan -- and
the killings is Witness in Philadelphia by Florence Mars [Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1977.] Miss Mars was the only white
person in Philadelphia to take a strong stand against the Klan and the
killings during that blood-dimmed period. She came from one of the oldest
white families in the region and that gave her some protection -- but not
much. I have her book [Witness] and she has mine [Jackson, Mississippi.]
The first letter is from Mrs Rainey -- and the second, also in the Meridian
paper, is from a like-minded person.
The letter below was in reaction to a column by Sid Salter describing a
chance encounter Salter had with former Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence
Rainey at a Mississippi welcome center.
_________________________________________________________________
Letters to the Editor
The Meridian Star
P.O. Box 1591
Meridian, MS.
39302
Sunday, Nov. 24, 2002
Mrs. Lawrence Rainey on Salter's column
To the editor:
I would like to say a few things about the slanderous article in
the Nov. 13 Meridian Star (Sid Salter's column, "Rainey's ironic
welcome"). It is absolutely lies and slander from start to finish.
When Lawrence Rainey worked at the Welcome Center he did not look
any older than Salter. And he was not stoop shouldered, was not hobbled
and did not limp whatsoever. He did not wear a baseball cap. He wore an
officer's uniform hat. You will never find anyone who took more pride in
his uniform and his personal appearance.
He stood straight and tall and was a very handsome man, which fact
must have made a short, fat writer we know jealous.
He also brought up the picture of all the men, which they say is a
courtroom This is not a courtroom. It was at the Navy Base where the
F.B.I. tried to hide them from their lawyers.
I lived with the man for 27 years and he was never haunted by the
ghosts of the three people because he had nothing to do with it. He was
not working for the Rev. McDonald at the mall when the N.A.A.C.P. caused
him to lose his job. It was an I.G.A. grocery store.
The only thing he was ever "haunted" by was lying reporters who
never printed what he told them. They printed what they wanted to make
headlines.
It is a shame the man was not allowed to die with some dignity. I
call it pure cowardice and yellow journalism to write this after the man
is gone and can't defend himself.
Well, Sid, (notice I don't say Mr.), you should hang out your
doctor's shingle, since you know what caused Lawrence's cancer. Even the
doctors can't say what will or will not cause it. Watch what you eat,
drink or breathe, Sid. I hope you spend some sleepless nights because of
the hate you have spread.
Juanita Rainey
Philadelphia
Letters to the Editor
The Meridian Star
P.O. Box 1591
Meridian, MS.
39302
Sunday, Dec. 1, 2002
Let sleeping
dogs lie
To the editor:
In a letter to the editor published on Nov. 24, Mrs. Juanita Rainey,
widow of former Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey, accuses
columnist Sid Salter of using "yellow journalism" to slander her husband
"after the man is gone and can't defend himself."
I, too, thought that Mr. Salter's attack on Lawrence Rainey ("Rainey's
ironic welcome," Nov. 13) was in poor taste, and I agree with Mrs.
Rainey when she says that "it is a shame that the man (her husband) was
not allowed to die with some dignity." Apparently, Mr. Salter is not
familiar with the old adage, "Let sleeping dogs lie."
I don't know what Sheriff Rainey did or did not do in Neshoba County
almost 40 years ago. Nor does Sid Salter. However, I do know that it
would have been much better for all concerned if Andrew Goodman and
Michael Schwerner had stayed in New York where they belonged.
I also know that columnists like Mr. Salter serve no useful purpose
whatsoever when they insult - and that's what Sid did - a man who has
been dead less than two weeks.
Richard Williams
Meridian
Hunter Gray [Hunterbear]
www.hunterbear.org
Protected by NaŽshdoŽiŽbaŽiŽ
and Ohkwari'
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