FBI records: Late senator linked to Klan

[maddezmom]

Nearly a quarter century after U.S. Sen. Jim Eastland's death, Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen still talks about the many jobs he did for the veteran lawmaker.

Former inmate Larry Ellis told the FBI that Killen talked repeatedly of tasks he did for Eastland, quoting Killen as saying, "There was not anything I would not have done for him. He made miracles happen for me. He was and will always be my No. 1 hero."

Killen is serving 60 years in prison following his conviction in 2005 in Neshoba County for orchestrating the Klan's June 21, 1964, killings of three civil rights workers.

Eastland's nephew, Hiram Jr. of Greenwood, said he doesn't believe Killen's claim that he knew Eastland. "I know for a fact the senator did not associate himself with people like that," he said. "And I guarantee he wasn't having Killen do anything illegal."

The senator regarded the killings as shameful, he said.

But in the days following their disappearances, Eastland repeatedly tried to convince President Lyndon Johnson it was a publicity stunt, telling him there was no Ku Klux Klan in Neshoba County. A month later, Eastland took to the Senate floor, saying a hoax was a real possibility if the trio remained missing.

more:http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20091018/NEWS/910180365

[bluestateguy]

1. What a virulent racist he was

Thank God he is dead.

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. He'll be getting his deserts right now. "Vengeance is mine", says the Lord. "I will repay!"

[ab hollow]

2. Mike Wallace interview with Eastland (1957)

Senator James Eastland
7/28/57

Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, who has been called "The Voice of the White South," talks to Wallace about segregation, slavery, the Soviet Union, voting rights laws, and the Ku Klux Klan.

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/eastland_james_t.html

[checks-n-balances]

6. One strong parallel between then & now is right wing twisting of the message

Read just about five minutes into the transcript and see how Eastland insists that African Americans (whom he calls "Nigras") actually wanted and LEGISLATED segregation. No wonder Fox and all the rightwing thinktanks are so successful at propaganda & the rewriting of history - they learned from the likes of Eastland decades ago.

Sickening and demonic.:grr:

[Raspberry]

3. When I saw that headline--

I thought Sen. Byrd had died.

[LeftishBrit]

8. And I thought it might be about Jesse Helms!

[CanonRay]

4. Wonder what they'd find if they looked at Jeff Sessions?

[ArbustoBuster]

9. That may be hard to do.

Scientists recommend looking at Jeff Sessions only through a heavy slab of leaded glass, in order to keep his evil from mutating the viewer.

[IndianaGreen]

7. Ahhh, the segregationist wing of the Democratic Party, replaced by today's conservadems

Same old shit as before, coerce and blackmail the liberal wing into silence in order to not split the party.