A cautionary tale

By Gary May

June 13, 2005

THE BODY OF Emmett Till, murdered in Mississippi 50 years ago for allegedly whistling at a white woman, was exhumed this month for an autopsy, part of the Justice Department's decision to re-examine that ancient case.

And today, Edgar Ray Killen, called "Preacher" by his colleagues in the Ku Klux Klan, is scheduled to go on trial in a Mississippi courtroom in connection with the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964. His prosecution, like the Till investigation, is part of what David Halberstam calls "little Nurembergs," the reopening of the civil rights era's cold cases in an effort to bring closure to the victims' families and send the message that racially motivated murder will never be permitted.

The case of Viola Liuzzo, the only white woman to die in the civil rights movement, also merits consideration.

On March 25, 1965, at the conclusion of the voting rights march in which Ms. Liuzzo participated, she was shot and killed on an Alabama highway by four members of the Ku Klux Klan. What makes the Liuzzo tragedy especially significant is that one of the Klansman was an FBI informant. His activities inside the Alabama Klan shed light on how intelligence agencies used informants in the 1960s and still use them in the current war against terrorism.