Reply #1: WP: For Civil Rights Crusaders, Arrest Brings Relief

[GOPFighter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57434-2005Jan7.html

" "I said the stereotypic words: 'At last!' " said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who as a law student went to Mississippi in 1963 to work with SNCC creating model freedom schools that taught voting rights. The freedom schools laid the groundwork for the following year's Freedom Summer, in which students from across the nation headed to the state for a voting rights project.

Norton said she did not believe there would ever be an arrest in the case of the three young activists whose killings opened the country's eyes to the brutality with which segregation was being enforced. Schwerner and Goodman were white New Yorkers; Chaney, who was black, was from Mississippi.

"It diminishes the level of justice to come so long after the killings," she added. "The ones who deserve justice, the ones most closely hurt, are dead now. And those who aren't have been living with this pain without any justice being done. But pursuing justice, even justice delayed, is a gain."

I remember the murders very well. I was still a conservative, anti-Civil-Rights guy back then (influence of my parents and my church). I think this incident was the beginning of my change in attitude.