PHILADELPHIA, Miss. - Jury selection started Monday under heavy security for the trial of a reputed Ku Klux Klansman accused in the notorious killings of three civil rights workers four decades ago.
Defendant Edgar Ray Killen, who has been free on bail, looked straight ahead and said nothing as he was taken into the two-story, red brick courthouse in a wheelchair.
A federal trial was held in the 1960s, but Killen, an 80-year-old part-time preacher, is the only person ever indicted on state murder charges in the case.
Streets near the courthouse in this town of about 7,300 people were barricaded more than hour before jury selection started. There were no early demonstrations, but a man who said he was Joseph J. Harper of Cordele, Ga., passed around business cards identifying himself as the Imperial Wizard of the American White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Inc.
The 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner shocked the nation and brought attention to the struggle to register black voters in the segregated South. Their killings were depicted in the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning."
