One Man's Death

---

---

As I wrote here when Charles Manson died less than two months ago, I get no joy from hearing that another human being has passed away, even one who caused great pain and suffering.

That, essentially, is how I received the news yesterday that Edgar Ray Killen, the mastermind in the conspiracy to murder three young civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964, died in prison a few days shy of his 93rd birthday.

By modern standards, plotting to murder three people usually merits little attention outside the community where such an act occurs.

But the '64 murders were different. Everyone from the president on down was watching developments in Mississippi. A priority was given to finding the missing civil rights workers; then, when their bodies were discovered, the emphasis shifted to bringing their killer(s) to justice.

Killen, an organizer for the Ku Klux Klan, was not present when the workers were abducted and murdered, but he was the one who coordinated everything — then made sure he had an alibi.

Homicide is usually a state charge, and juries in the South of the 1960s tended to be all white — and to acquit white defendants in the slayings of blacks. It was believed the only way a conviction could be obtained was through the federal judicial system, and Killen was among 18 men who, in 1967, faced federal charges of violating the civil rights of the three young men.

Seven of the defendants were convicted and sentenced to from three to 10 years in prison, but the jury couldn't agree on Killen. Eleven voted for conviction, but one refused, saying she did not believe a man of God could participate in something like that.

Killen was a part–time Baptist preacher.

He was convicted of participating in the murders in 2005, 41 years to the day after the triple slaying that inspired the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning," and spent the rest of his life in prison. But he was convicted of manslaughter. So much time had passed since the murders that many witnesses had died, and the jury did not have enough evidence for a homicide conviction. Still three consecutive 20–year sentences were likely to be more than the 80–year–old Killen could survive.

And, indeed, he did not.

Since Killen's death, the only things I have seen written about him were news accounts of his demise. I have seen no columns, no editorials, no commentaries of any kind about him or the era in which he lived — and that he influenced.

I'm not sure what to make of that because I certainly expected to see something, particularly in a polarized time like this. It was only a few months ago, after all, that statues of Confederate soldiers were being brought down from coast to coast — and the Confederacy ceased to exist more than half a century before Killen's birth.

Killen was from the 20th century, about the same age as a fellow who lived down the road from me in central Arkansas. He wasn't, as far as I know, a member of the Klan, but he was a segregationist and an unsuccessful candidate for first governor and then U.S. senator when I was in elementary school.

Well, that was what the public saw. I saw a man who was kind and treated me like a member of the family. In fact, I spent many of my waking hours outside of school at his house, playing with his twin sons.

When he committed suicide eight years ago, I was stunned by the hateful comments I saw on social media sites where folks from my home state tend to congregate.

It was probably because of that experience that I anticipated an equally rabid reaction to Killen's death. Once again, I am stunned — but happily so.

I am inclined to think that maybe that is a good thing. Maybe the fact that a notorious Klansman like Edgar Ray Killen can die in prison and cause barely a ripple is a sign of a maturing society.

That is a welcome development when words like racist, sexist and Nazi are thrown around almost casually.

It is important, once in awhile at least, to be reminded of what those words really mean — and for whom the label is appropriate.

The Day George Wallace Was Shot

---

---

There were quite a few assassinations — and assassination attempts — when I was growing up.

But I believe the one that occurred 40 years ago today — in which Alabama Gov. George Wallace was shot while campaigning in Laurel, Md., for the Democratic presidential nomination — was the first to show both the assassin and his would–be victim together in the same photos and film sequences.

It was a Monday, and school was going to close for the summer in another week or so. Everyone was eager for summer vacation — the students, the teachers, everyone, I guess, except the mothers who would soon have their children under foot 24 hours a day.

Otherwise, it was just an ordinary Monday — and, sometime that afternoon, I learned that Wallace had been shot. I don't remember now if word spread while I was still in school that day or if I learned what had happened when I got home, but, when I did get home, it was all over the television stations, wiping out the cartoons I usually watched after school.

---

---

So I got on my bike and rode over to the home of two guys who were in my grade in school, Danny and David Johnson — and, as I often did in those days, I stayed for supper.

I've written here before about that occasion. Danny and David's father was a well–known Arkansas segregationist who managed Wallace's independent presidential campaign in Arkansas in 1968, and the attempt on Wallace's life earlier that day inspired political reporters in Little Rock to seek his reaction.

They got a quick response from him — he called it a "dastardly act" — and my memory of that day is that nothing else was said about the shooting around that table that night — other than Mr. Johnson's wry comment to his sons and me that his remark "sounded like a bad word."

He grinned his trademark grin when he said it, and, even though I was a small boy and didn't understand all the things that were happening in the world, I felt confident that Gov. Wallace would not be like the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, that he would survive the shooting.

Which he did. But he never walked again.

It was the end of an era, and, historian Theodore White asserted in "The Making of the President 1972," his book on the 1972 election, Richard Nixon's re–election was assured thanks to the Wallace shooting.

In his paranoid way, Nixon feared Wallace, who nearly succeeded in his quest to deny both Nixon and Democrat Hubert Humphrey a majority in the Electoral College in 1968. If Wallace won the 1972 Democratic nomination, Nixon reasoned, he might win outright.

"For two years, George Wallace had haunted the planning of the White House," White wrote. But, after Wallace was shot, "it was all over. Only the question of margin remained; whether the president could get that mandate for which his lonesome soul so longed, that landslide authority which might let him act with the largeness of the great presidents of the past."

Nixon did, indeed, win a landslide victory over George McGovern in 1972. A few years later, when White wrote his thoughtful examination of Nixon and the Watergate scandal, "Breach of Faith," he credited Wallace's influence for many of the decisions and actions of the Nixon White House.

"[T]o eliminate the threat of Wallace in the future," White wrote, "[Nixon] was to use, in 1970, trickeries against the Alabama governor only slightly less dirty than those he used against Democratic candidates in 1972."

And, as we all know, Nixon ultimately was forced to resign because of the dirty tricks his 1972 campaign used against the opposition.

But that was still in the future on this day in 1972. Forty years ago today, the shooting of George Wallace was a cause for somber reflection on both political extremes.

Although not as polarized then as they are today, the right and the left were forced by the shooting to examine their own philosophies and their attitudes about George Wallace and his role in the political debate.

For voters on the right, Wallace was the spokesman who articulated their hopes and dreams — and fears. For those on the left, he was symbolic of everything they believed was wrong with the nation.

He was both — at the same time — I suppose. And he was neither.

I'm inclined to think Wallace was a politician — and, like most successful politicians then and now, a panderer.

Early in his political career, when he was a circuit judge, Wallace had a reputation for being fair and impartial. Race did not matter in his courtroom. But then he lost a governor's race in which he had been endorsed by the NAACP and the winner had enjoyed the support of the Ku Klux Klan.

Wallace claimed he had been "outniggered" and that it wouldn't happen again. He kept his word. When he ran for governor four years later, he took a solidly segregationist stand and won by a landslide.

"I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened," Wallace said. "And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor."

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Wallace shooting for many was the fact that, like the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords last year, the assailant had no real political motive.

Had there been one, it might have been easier to accept. But when the diary of Arthur Bremer, Wallace's would–be assassin, was published, it indicated that his only real objective was notoriety — not unlike the would–be assassin of Ronald Reagan, who wanted only to impress an actress.

There was nothing that could elevate the intended sacrifice, not even a biblical sense of justice.

The Dean of the Senate

In 1917, Woodrow Wilson was president.

He famously kept America out of World War I in his first term, but he failed to keep it out of the war after his second term began.

That was the world into which Robert Byrd was born in November 1917 — nearly six months after John F. Kennedy was born. And today, after more than half a century of representing his home state of West Virginia in Washington, he died at the age of 92.

I think it is important to remember that he was a product of a different time. It was a time when social class determined everything. On board the ill–fated Titanic only a few years before Byrd was born, social class played a prominent role in whether people lived or died.

Not much had changed in the America of 1917, where the Constitution said no man could be denied the right to vote on the basis of race, but in many places, the hoops through which blacks had to jump in order to be registered were so imposing that few could succeed. And most women were not allowed to vote in those days, although the Constitution would give them that right within a few years.

There is no doubt that the America in which Byrd died today was far removed from the America into which he was born.

Although Kennedy and Byrd were born in the same year, they were born into vastly different circumstances. Kennedy was born into a wealthy family; Byrd's mother died during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, and the children were sent to live with relatives. Byrd was adopted by his aunt and uncle and raised in a coal–mining town.

Like many young people, Byrd was uncertain which career path to follow as he entered his 20s. And he found acceptance with the Ku Klux Klan, which he joined at the age of 24.

Does the fact that Byrd gravitated to the Ku Klux Klan at a time when segregation existed in most parts of the United States and the armed forces that were being called upon to repel the Nazis in Europe and the Japanese in the Pacific were still segregated have any meaning? I don't know. Young people often seek acceptance in questionable groups. Many times, they find that a group isn't what they thought it was, and they leave.

On the surface, that is what appears to have happened with Byrd. He belonged to the Klan for a short time, then he "became disinterested, quit paying my dues and dropped my membership in the organization."

But there have been other indications that Byrd was committed to the Klan's message of hate.

---

"I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side. ... Rather I should die a thousand times and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

Robert Byrd
Letter to Mississippi Sen. Theodore Bilbo in 1944

---

It isn't possible — as far as I know — for any mere mortals to peek into another person's head and see what lurks there. Was Robert Byrd, as some have suggested, a racist?

Well, there are different opinions on that. Paul Begala writes, in The Daily Beast, that Byrd's "one–year flirtation" with the KKK in the 1940s left "a stain that marked him for life."

And yet, Begala acknowledged, there was also Byrd's opposition to the Civil Rights Act 20 years later. But Begala also observes the many ways in which Byrd tried to make amends in later years.

It was during his time with the Klan that the idea of a political career took hold. After being told that he had a knack for leadership, Byrd said, "suddenly lights flashed in my mind! Someone important had recognized my abilities! I was only 23 or 24 years old, and the thought of a political career had never really hit me. But strike me that night, it did."

Byrd's talent for leadership may have reached its zenith only a few years ago. Many people voted for Barack Obama believing he would bring the war in Iraq to a speedy conclusion, but, if Byrd had had his way, America never would have invaded in the first place. He went on record voting against the war and lawmakers' authorization of George W. Bush to pursue what Byrd called "reckless and arrogant" policies.

He said Congress was giving Bush a "blank check," and he was right. But the check didn't remain blank for long. In their haste to give the president the authority to invade Iraq (which he quickly exercised), lawmakers from both parties stuck Americans with a running tab that now exceeds $1 trillion.

In many ways, Byrd was a visionary leader, realizing early on, as Newsweek's Eleanor Clift recalls, the power of television and playing a significant role in permitting C–Span to televise Senate proceedings.

I always thought that much of the resistance Byrd may have encountered was easily explained. The Senate may well be the most exclusive club around, but not all its members are gifted speakers and there were many then, as there are now, who preferred to keep their remarks between themselves. That wasn't a concern for Byrd. He "was one of the Senate's great orators," Clift writes. And, indeed, he was.

I found it intriguing when former President Carter said today that Byrd "was my closest and most valuable adviser while I served as president. I respected him and attempted in every way to remain in his good graces."

Of course, that is the kind of thing one is expected to say on the occasion of someone else's death, and I have long been an admirer of President Carter, but it occurred to me that, if he really did hold Byrd in such high regard when he was in the White House, his attitude almost certainly must have changed by the time he sought renomination for the presidency in 1980.

As Clift points out, Byrd supported Ted Kennedy's bid to unseat Carter, and that must have been a sore spot for Carter, who was snubbed by his rival on the podium at the party convention that summer. "Byrd thought Carter didn't show proper respect for the Congress, treating it like the Georgia legislature," she writes. "Every chance he could, Byrd stuck it to Carter and pushed Kennedy as the candidate of the Senate Democrats."

After 30 years, I guess Carter got over the bad experience. He had complimentary things to say about Kennedy, too, when he died last summer. Time heals all wounds.

I'm inclined to wonder, though, if Robert Byrd, a product of his times, was always at heart that pragmatic politician whose skills were first noticed by an associate in the Ku Klux Klan and whose use for anyone depended upon what that person could do for him, whether it was to give him a vote or help him rehabilitate his image.

And, in that sense, he remained open to shifts in popular thinking. Whether he agreed with the shifts may not have mattered. The only question he may have asked on many issues was, "Which way is the wind blowing?"

"In many ways, Byrd had more in common with the culturally conservative Carter than he did with the liberal lion," Clift writes, "but he joined forces with Kennedy on more government spending for social programs, and Kennedy in turn brought him along on civil–rights legislation, helping him to bury his long ago past as a member of the Ku Klux Klan."

When I review the totality of Byrd's remarkable career, I can only conclude that he was a man of contradictions, not so different from most. He made his mistakes and tried to make up for them. Not so different from most guys.

Except for his gift for oratory.