Edgar ray killen biography of barack

Edgar Ray Killen
Edgar Ray Killen, a thirty-eight-year-old, ordained Baptist minister, was the point man in the conspiracy to murder three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi on June 21, 1964.  It was Killen ("the Preacher") who Deputy Sheriff Price contacted that Sunday afternoon to get the word out to local klansmen that he was holding for their later disposal three men, including Mickey Schwerner, the much despised "Goatee."

Killen, the owner of a local sawmill and a former unsuccessful candidate for sheriff, was a marginal character until Sam Bowers appointed him "kleagle," or klavern recruiter and organizer, for the Neshoba and Lauderdale County klan.  He zealously performed his duties, as evidenced by the over seventy men who met on June 16 in Meridian to plan a trip to Mount Zion Church in Longdale, where they hoped to find and kill Schwerner.  Instead of encountering Schwerner, they found only local blacks, who the klan badly beat before burning