Justice Delayed, but not Denied

This is what a terrorist looks like.
One variety of that animal, anyway.

Sometimes you just luck out. You walk into a classroom and a professor just blows your hair back and changes your life.

Twenty years ago, I took an upper-division Sociology course called Racism & Discrimination, and the professor who taught it changed me profoundly. In fact, the first person I thought to call when this whole blogging thing started to take off and I started to make a name for myself and get a little notice was Bill Russell, the professor who taught that course. Such was his impact on my life.

When I woke up this morning to the news that Klansman and domestic terrorist James Ford Seale had been convicted of murder and kidnapping in the deaths of two black teenagers forty-three years ago. My first instinct when I heard the news was to call that professor - but it is June. He is not in his office. (♥ email.)

On May 2, 1964 Charles Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee were picked up on a country road, beaten, stuffed into the trunk of a car, and driven to a remote backwater of the Mississippi River. They were bound and weighted down, tethered to an engine block, and thrown into the river alive. A crime rooted in evil and hatred. An act only a human would - or could - commit.

Their bodies were discovered weeks later, during the search for Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman who disappeared while registering black voters in Mississippi.

''I'm going to go to that cemetery, that Mount Olive Cemetery, I'm going to tell Charles Moore, `I told you that I see it to the end.''' Thomas Moore, 63, of Colorado Springs, Colo., said after the verdict. “I now feel that Mississippi is my home, Mississippi, you came a long way and I'm so proud the jury spoke.''

Thomas Moore has not lived in Mississippi since joining the Army just a few weeks before his brother disappeared. He served in Vietnam and made the Army his career, serving 30 years. His efforts were instrumental in the successful prosecution of the animal who heinously murdered two young men for the crime of being black in Franklin County Mississippi in 1964.

Charles Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee were murdered 43 years, one month and 12 days before justice was served.

Last night, they were finally able to rest in peace.