Justice on Trial

The cynics are saying-and they are probably right--that a Mississippi jury will never consider convicting the alleged murderers of James Chancy, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman. It is a repellent thought, but disgust should not blind us to the possible significance of the FBI arrests; they may well mark a successful end to the first phase of Mississippi's Negro revolution.

For years civil rights workers in the Deep South have pleaded, with little success, for more U.S. Marshals or FBI agents on the scene, for more Justice Department suits against infringements of voting rights, in short, for some sort of Federal intervention. Hopefully the arrest of these men symbolizes a fundamental change in the attitude of the Federal government.

As recently as two years ago, the government was still using the civil rights laws only as tools of amelioration and compromise, instead of as expressions of justice. In April of 1963, the Justice Department filed a comprehensive voting rights suit against the registration officials of Greenville, Mississippi. Several weeks later, in an unrelated incident, hundreds of Negroes demonstrated peacefully against the segregated public accommodations of Greenville. All were jailed. The Justice Department, "to preserve harmony and an atmosphere of reason," entered into negotiations with the city's officials. The upshot of these discussions was the unconditional release of the demonstrators--and the withdrawal of the Federal voting rights suit. Law had once more been relegated to the role of pawn in a delicate chess game of equivocation and compromise.

As a rationale for its action, the Justice Department explained that its chances of winning such a law suit in Mississippi were very slim from the beginning. In other words, if white Mississippians think nothing of legality, why should we? The answer to this question is, of course, to turn the question around: If we think nothing of legality, why should they?

The Philadelphia case signals a break with the government's record of timidity and half-measures. The FBI acted there, though chances of conviction were slim, simply because the evidence and a sense of justice demanded action. Prejudiced juries may eventually ignore that evidence, out this time at least fear of those juries did not coerce the government into ignoring it. The eventual trial may result in injustice, but there will at least be a trial.

The Philadelphia case is, however, only a beginning. The Justice Department still holds officially to its policy of suing only when victory is probable. And, according to the New Republic, many FBI agents still construe their primary duty as "education, not prosecution."

How, we wonder, can a people be taught to respect law when their teachers continue to use law cynically, prosecuting not when the weight of evidence demands prosecution, but only when the whims and passions of local citizens seem to make conviction probable? The Federal government should start teaching by example, should start standing up to prejudice in the courts and stop fencing with prejudice in the city halls and back rooms.

Before the Philadelphia case, those who advocated fencing had a fairly cogent argument. They claimed that prosecution, rather than sobering local citizens, often rallied them behind the defendants, who became town martyrs. This reasoning no longer holds weight. True, an angry mob of rednecks gathered to hiss the FBI agents upon the arrest of Sheriff Rainey. But that mob did not speak for the town. Rainey was no martyr to the ten Neshoba County clergymen, all of whom signed this statement: "There is an element of shame to all that there would be among us those accused of such a crime... We desire to see justice prevail...."

And, more significantly, Rainey was no martyr to the local newspaper editor who wrote: "We must not cut off our noses to spite our faces. It means too much to our community to say that we won't obey the law to the best of our ability (for) our economy will suffer, and prospective industrialists will surely pass us by." These sentiments may not be particularly noble; and that is the point. The path of justice and the road to riches have finally merged for a large segment of the population of this small, representative Mississippi town. Respectable Mississippians can no longer afford not to obey the Federal laws; certainly the Federal government can now enforce those laws.