Chapter 14 two murders

Brother Lu: Hello! Today I want to tell you the final story of the black civil rights movement in the 1960s. As I said earlier, 1964 was a very important year in the history of the American black civil rights movement.This was the year in which the civil rights law introduced by President Kennedy to Congress was finally passed by both houses of Congress after many twists and turns. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the first time in the history of the United States to explicitly prohibit racial discrimination in various fields of social and public life in the form of a federal law, marking that the United States has finally legally resolved the racial problems that have persisted since the founding of the country.From then on, he was a representative of early neo-Kantianism.Arguing from the standpoint of physiological idealism, American blacks have the same equal rights as whites in law.

However, although there are federal laws guaranteeing equal rights for blacks, it does not mean that blacks in the South immediately have the ability and opportunity to implement such equal rights.In the depths of the extreme South, from slavery before the Civil War to various discriminatory local laws after the Civil War, and even the lynching of the KKK mob, a large number of blacks still live at the bottom of society.The states with the worst racial discrimination are the old southern slave states, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, where nearly a quarter of the population is black. But in the nearly 100 years since the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution granted blacks citizenship, these blacks in extreme southern states have not participated in political elections, have not served as jurors in courts, and in some places have not even been able to serve as witnesses in court Testify that these three are the most important rights of a citizen.There are different reasons for this situation. The main reason is of course the tone of local racial discrimination.Most racially prejudiced whites have long regarded black participation in elections as the greatest threat to the status of southern whites, and have been using KKK-style terror and threats to keep blacks out of elections.On the other hand, historically, most blacks in the South were poorer, scattered, less educated and more illiterate.This makes their awareness of civil rights relatively weak for a long time.This situation cannot be changed immediately by a simple federal civil rights law. After the law is finalized, there is still a lot of in-depth work to be done.

Take a simple example.Ballots in the United States are very complicated, far from a small print with several names printed on them in our impression.In addition to electing the president, governor, mayor, etc., there are also a large number of councilors who are good. , local security police and a series of officials to be elected.A large number of bills are directly voted by the people, not by the parliament.Before each election, local newspapers have a wealth of electoral assistance readings, including explanations and introductions to bills to be voted on.Across the United States today, before elections, a large number of personnel are invested to assist citizens in understanding and completing elections.But at that time, a large number of low-educated southern blacks and even illiterates could not receive such assistance.

Therefore, for the black civil rights organizations headed by Martin Luther King, in 1964, in terms of legal guarantees, the civil rights movement was already victorious, and it was also a victory for substantively changing the social status of southern blacks. The moment in sight.At this time, black civil rights organizations were facing the final stage of their work, which was to help blacks in the southern states stand up and exercise their political rights, especially the right to vote.At this moment, the first thing they have to do is to do a lot of in-depth and meticulous work into thousands of black families in the South.One by one, mobilize them to participate in elections and assist them with voter registration and teach them how to vote.At the same time, what they need to face is the ubiquitous hostility to the black civil rights movement in the most closed areas of the extreme south. What's worse, this hostility may be turned into a real danger by some southern KKK extremists at any time.

In the summer of 1964, black civil rights organizations chose Mississippi, the most dangerous and difficult area in the Deep South, as the location for their "Summer Freedom Project" to educate and mobilize black people to participate in elections.They mobilized hundreds of college students, both white and black, from the universities in the North, and after training, they sent them to the towns of Mississippi to publicize and educate the black people. Why go through training?Because everyone knows that going here is very dangerous. These small towns in the south are scattered between large forests and swamps. They are sparsely populated. They have always been very closed, and they have always been self-governing.Thinking about it now, we simply thought that at that time, the whole of the United States was a racially segregated society, and the United States was the same everywhere, and Americans were similar. What a big misunderstanding.Only later did we gradually understand that these problems only occurred in a very specific area of ​​the United States left over from history.For this area, even most white Americans at that time were unwilling to go to it rashly.Because, in these small southern towns that were very isolated at the time, foreigners, especially the "Yankees" who spoke standard American English different from their southern dialect, were full of distrust and even hostility.

Our white friend Francis told us that he was a hippie college student in the late sixties.He once planned to take a car to Florida, but if there are some cars that can get halfway, he must find out which state he stops in and go south. He only dares to go to Virginia and North Carolina. It is not safe to get off and stop in Nanzhou.I asked him why, and he said that he had long hippie hair, which made him look like a "Yankee". It's no wonder that he didn't get beaten up in those extreme southern states. I was talking about this with my friend Carol the other day, and she said that she moved with her parents from Missouri to a small town like this in northern Georgia in those days.Strictly speaking, Missourians are not "Yankees", and her family is also a generation of native white Americans.However, they are still not welcome.They encountered a series of troubles as soon as they moved in, and even the dog at home was poisoned to death by someone.The experience of moving house as a child was almost a nightmare for her.I asked her strangely, aren't you also white?Carlo said to me, you think these people are just racist, they are narrow, narrow to the extreme.Not to mention "Yankees", even foreigners from neighboring counties, they didn't like it.They don't care if you are white, red or purple or blue!

In some areas like this, at the time of the final showdown after a hundred years of contests after the Civil War, some extremely narrow-minded southern white people had accumulated hostility, hatred, and humiliation since the day they were defeated. Then there is the fear of seeing black people on the verge of being equal to them in political standing.They have a premonition that this kind of equal status not only means that the closed life and order they have been accustomed to for hundreds of years will be broken, but it is even possible that one day in the future, black people will be elected as leaders of a certain community. will dominate the life of the communities in which they live.This was a prospect that white extremists living in these closed southern areas at the time did not want to see.However, this prospect was pushed to the front by the trend of history, and their tension and fear also reached their limit.

It is conceivable that at this time, the civil rights workers who entered the deep South with the task of promoting this historical transformation may face what kind of danger.For these southern white extremists, this was simply the last battle of the Civil War.Some of them, in this situation, may completely ignore the law, take reckless risks, and fight to the death. Many of the black civil rights organizations grew up in and came from the south. They are well aware of the nature of these special regions, and of course they are well aware of the dangers of these "going deep into the tiger's den" plans.Therefore, they asked the federal government to protect the volunteers who participated in this action plan.

At this time, Martin Luther King and other black civil rights leaders already had a very high reputation and influence in the United States.After President Kennedy was assassinated, the federal executive branch headed by President Johnson attached great importance to the safety of these young people from the very beginning, but the work done by the federal executive branch was mainly to appeal to these young people who were attracted by the call of black civil rights organizations and volunteered to participate in the action young people explain the facts, hoping to achieve the purpose of dissuading them.

During the training of the "Summer Freedom Program", FBI officials went there again and again, hoping that these young volunteers would understand that due to the dual sovereignty of the federal and state divisions in the U.S. Constitution, the federal government cannot directly intervene in state and local law and order. of.This is not only because maintaining law and order is a local right, but also because, under such a system, there is no central police organization in the United States.Over the past two hundred years since the founding of the United States, the powers of the federal government have expanded surprisingly. However, since the drafting of the Constitution, the expansion of the powers of the federal government has been a taboo in American society, and every step it takes will cause strong backlash. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, like other federal laws, is basically still implemented by the states themselves. The federal government will not rashly use the name of the federal government to enforce federal laws in the states unless it is forced to.What's more, law and order, especially preventive law and order, is completely within the purview of the state government according to the law.

As mentioned in my original letter to you, the American people have always been wary of establishing a police agency controlled by the central government, although they know that they are always paying the price for their security. The FBI officials told these young people who insisted on going, you must understand that if you must go, you must adjust your behavior to avoid danger.Because you can only seek security from the state and local police where you are going, "we can't follow you to protect you".The reason is that "the United States actually does not have a federal police agency. Many people think that the FBI is such an agency, but in fact it is not the case."FBI officials repeatedly explained to black civil rights organizations that the FBI is just an investigative agency of the federal government.That is to say, when cross-state criminal activities occur, the FBI has the right to conduct investigations in various states to obtain evidence according to the law, so that the Federal Department of Justice can use this evidence for prosecution.But when you go to the Southern towns, we cannot go with you with our guns to protect you, because that would violate the rights of the states.Only state and local police have the power to police. To be clear, if a crime occurs, if someone is injured or even killed, the FBI has the power to investigate the crime; however, this is an investigative agency. There is nothing the Bureau of Investigation can do to enforce stalking protection. Everyone knew that at that time, the governor of Mississippi and the governor of Alabama were racists themselves.The local police officers are elected by the local white people, and many of them are also white racist radicals.I would like to point out to you that these vigilantes are basically not runaway gangsters, most of them are committed to maintaining "law and order", the problem is that many of them are the same as the local lower-level white people who elected them , is a radical with strong racial prejudice.In their eyes, "their south" has always been "rigorous in law and orderly".Those civil rights workers who came from the North are the "criminals" who "undermined the law and order in the South".Therefore, it is probably impossible to count on these local security police officers to effectively protect these college students from the north. Therefore, the officials of the FBI actually hope that these recruited people will give up the idea of ​​​​going deep into the deep South immediately. ", try not to stimulate potential dangerous elements in the area. On this issue, it also typically reflects the relationship between American non-governmental organizations and the government.Here, there are a large number of non-governmental organizations like the "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People", ranging from three to five members to tens of thousands of members.In fact, even religious organizations such as churches are also such civil organizations.In the black civil rights movement, the church played one of the most important roles.The problem is that the government has no right to interfere with the actions of these civil organizations as long as they do not break the law.There is also no obligation to inform the Government of their various action plans.For example, the "Summer Freedom Program", if the leader of the program hadn't felt uneasy about its danger and asked the FBI for protection, the US government executive agencies would never have known about it. The immigrant background in the United States makes its civil organizations extraordinarily complicated.Some immigrant civic groups even focus on their own home countries.Some of the more radical members will also frequently "attack" areas outside the United States that they care about.Generally, countries that do not understand the operation of the American social system tend to blame the US government for this, suspecting that this is the instigation and dispatch of the US government.In fact, the US government has no right to interfere with these plethora of civil organizations.A very important part of the freedom of association in the United States is "being responsible for one's own actions."Only when your actions have violated the laws of the United States will you be approached by the police or prosecutors from the executive branch of the government. Therefore, it is extremely unusual for an organizer of the black civil rights movement to ask the FBI to protect the actions of a civil society organization.However, for the FBI, there is still such a problem, that is, the system limits their scope of authority, and they can only give advice and explain the situation, but they cannot intervene in matters that are not within their scope. So when Martin Luther King Jr. told the participants of the Summer Freedom Program, be prepared, be prepared to be threatened, abused, beaten, arrested.There is another sentence, which he did not explicitly say, that is, there must be the possibility of sacrificing one's life. So what was the training they received?It is hard to believe that the main content of the training is the concept and details of "non-violence". Although the black civil rights movement organizations headed by Martin Luther King Jr. have reached a considerable consensus at this time, the "non-violent resistance" of blacks has also won the general sympathy of the American people throughout the civil rights movement, and has become the most powerful force in their hands. weapons.However, in looking back on this "Summer Freedom Project" today, I cannot fully appreciate such a large-scale effort to help the "final emancipation" of Southern Negroes. "Non-violence" has become a maturely used political method today.It started with Mahatma Gandhi in India.Afterwards, it was continuously researched and developed, so that today there are magazines dedicated to the study of "non-violence", exploring the philosophical and technical issues of "non-violence" from different perspectives. "Nonviolent" protests have made substantial progress compared to advocating violence to solve problems.Its progress is reflected in the leap in understanding of human nature.However, when "non-violence" is used by a politician or a mass movement leader in a popular movement, there is still a question of whether it is "appropriately" used.There is only one criterion for judging this "degree", that is, whether it is truly based on humanity. The "non-violent" struggle led by Gandhi was very successful in achieving the goal of Indian independence. There is an often overlooked reason for this, that is, the British colonial government in India at that time was also evolving.It started from ruling the colonies with an iron fist policy, and due to its own historical progress and domestic pressure, it gradually moved towards a system that pays attention to the basic rules of the game.The non-violence proposed by Gandhi is to take the initiative to stand in a disadvantageous position and ask the other party to enter the rules of the game together.On the other hand, the perfection of this system also contributed to the "non-violent" struggle led by Gandhi from one aspect.After having the rules of the game, at least Gandhi knew that as a leader of such a large-scale opposition to the colonial government, he might be imprisoned for breaking the law during the resistance movement, but he would have the opportunity to experience a public trial, and sentencing is a must If there is a legal basis, he will never be killed quietly as soon as he enters the prison door.Therefore, challenging the judiciary, going to court, engaging in court debates, and going to jail have all become a "technique" of "nonviolent" protest.Under such a system, the result was that the British colonial government increasingly did not want to see Gandhi imprisoned, because this would accelerate Gandhi's star effect. The theory and practice of "non-violent" protest was proposed by Gandhi, who read a doctorate in law in England and knew the British political system like the back of his hand. It is by no means accidental that it succeeded in India ruled by the British colonial government. Familiarity with this system is the greatest basis for Gandhi's success in leading the "non-violent" movement.Because, after all, this system has rules to follow.Facing this system, Gandhi was confident.However, when Gandhi succeeded in igniting the high patriotism and nationalism of his compatriots, when the seemingly incompetent British colonial government completely surrendered and left, Gandhi found that facing his dear compatriots, But completely helpless.Because, at this time, he found that in front of him was a completely irrational group, and their enthusiasm remained undiminished. Throughout the decades-long Indian independence movement that drove out the British, there were times when things got out of hand on both sides, resulting in around 8,000 deaths.However, immediately after India's independence, it fell into a series of melees among compatriots due to different religions and factions. As a result, in just one year after India's independence, the number of people killed by compatriots killing each other was as high as 500,000.Even Gandhi, the founder of "non-violence", was utterly powerless to bring these "violences" to an end.At this time, any of his theories are useless, and his only "killer weapon" can only be to quell the savage fighting among compatriots by committing suicide on a hunger strike by virtue of his holy aura of "Mahatma".To put it bluntly, it is to deal with irrationality with irrationality.Although this trick worked frequently at the beginning, it is really a great tragedy for a perfectly sane English doctor of law and a creator of "non-violence" theory.Its tragedy far outweighs even the fact that Gandhi ended up being violently assassinated by his own countrymen. The success of Martin Luther King's "non-violence" also lies in his familiarity with the rules of the game in the American system. However, if in a system that does not pay attention to the rules of the game at all, if the leader of the "non-violent" movement knows that the "non-violent" movement he leads will inevitably lead to bloody violence on the other side, in this case, if He still allows the development of the situation, even promotes the development of the situation, and does not make any efforts when violence can be avoided. Then, even if the use of "violence" is on the opponent's side, the behavior of such a "non-violent" leader is still suspicious.A truly "non-violent" leader who takes justice and humanity as his slogans should use all means to avoid unnecessary sacrifice of innocent lives. In the "Summer Freedom Project" in 1964, I always wondered that some leaders of the black movement had more political effects to consider.A movement that originally called for justice and humanity seems to have ignored the foundation of humanity at this time.Not only that, when they mobilized thousands of enthusiastic, innocent and pure college students to participate in it, they did not give them more care for their young lives.They should have known that this particular program was not dealing with a system, but with some violent Southern extremists in the shadows of the country.This is more dangerous than what happened to the volunteers who challenged the desegregation of coaches.Because they had a large number of reporters following them back then, and both sides were in the open.In this plan, the college students going down in twos and threes have no perceptual knowledge of the extreme south, and they just plunge into the dark without any protection at all. What makes me feel most uncomfortable is that when formulating this plan, the black civil rights organization even considered that once a college student is in danger, if the victim is a child from an upper-class family, it can cause more serious problems in society. The great influence is more conducive to the advancement of the black civil rights movement, and it is even less conducive to the persistence of the extreme south.So, they consciously went to various famous universities in the north to recruit volunteers.Because in those prestigious schools, there are more children from upper-middle-class white families studying there.Their considerations in this regard basically achieved their goals.Of the three young college volunteers mentioned in my story below, not only two of them were white college students, but also the children of wealthy Jewish doctors. I always wondered, in that era, at the moment when the black civil rights movement has entered the end of its victory, it must be necessary for some college students who have no experience of living in the South to immediately go deep into the most dangerous places in this way go?Behind a quick success plan, what kind of psychological activities are hidden behind the planner? This is the American way of writing history.Whether it is the Civil War or a positive civil rights movement, there are always various people who reveal and judge any historical act from various angles. In the end, you can see the various aspects of a historical event. On the other hand, the history you learn is complete.At this time, you may have all aspects of thinking and reflection.Only then can people say that they have truly learned the lessons of history.When people look back on history, when affirming a historical event, they can also point out its problems at the same time.There is no perfect character, nor is there a perfect historical movement. I can only say that only these dedicated college students are perfect.They have inherited what is most precious in the spiritual mainstream of this country.In them we see the spirit of the first generations of anti-slavery.They transcended their racial affiliation, they were real people with human introspection and humane pursuit. On June 21, 1964, two white college students, Schwinner and Goodman, and a black college student, Charney, came to a small town in Mississippi.Although this small southern town has the same name as the famous big city "Philadelphia", it is just a small town with feathers deep in the jungle, so I should call it "Philadelphia".This small town is the center of Neshoba County.Three college students from the north visited the black ghetto nearby, checked the black church that had been set on fire, and talked with the black residents.In the afternoon, when they drove near the town, little did they know that they were being watched.At four o'clock, Deputy Price stopped them for speeding and was to take them to the police station. This is very abnormal.Generally speaking, if you drive over the speed limit, the police will issue a ticket.What's more, there is always only one driver in a car, and it has never been heard that it is a question to take away the passengers.However, Deputy Price insisted that the other two be taken as witnesses.In this way, they were taken to the police station in the town.There, they asked to make a phone call to communicate with the outside world. Such a legitimate request was flatly rejected by the police station in this small town. After 10 o'clock in the evening, Price asked them to pay a security fee of 20 dollars, and then released them.What they had seen and heard in the past few hours was enough to make them smell the dangerous atmosphere around them.When they walked out of the police station at 10:30 at night, the only thought on the minds of the three college students was to get out of this peaceful, white-populated town as soon as possible. However, they were never seen again and they disappeared. Since they did not report their whereabouts to the civil rights organization every day according to the scheduled plan, their sudden disappearance was quickly discovered by the civil rights organization and reported to the FBI immediately.They asked the FBI to find the three college students immediately.An FBI investigation team led by Agent Sullivan arrives in Fairfax, Mississippi, where the three college students were last seen.However, when they came to this small town, they only saw that it was as quiet as all the small towns in the south.Everyone, including Sheriff Rainey and Deputy Price, said they were gone. However, federal agents soon found the car of the three college students in a dense forest that was hard to reach. The car was completely burned, leaving only a shell.The three young men were nowhere to be seen.In the summer, the Mississippi swamp jungle is full of poisonous snakes. It is difficult to walk in such a jungle. Where can they go? The burnt-out car seems to silently imply a less fortunate ending than a more catastrophic one.The FBI immediately mobilized more than 100 agents to gather in Xiaofei Township to investigate the case as a kidnapping case.There are also more and more journalists from major news organizations across the country who are stationed in Feizhen every day.Due to the pressure of black civil rights organizations and the concerns of all walks of life, this case became a major case of the FBI. The progress of the investigation was reported to the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. every day, and Director Hoover personally intervened.He had promised the President that he would find out. A 44-day investigation followed.During these 44 days, the FBI interviewed and interviewed thousands of residents in Fei Township and Neshoba County, but did not get any clues.The FBI mobilized a lot of manpower and equipment, including jungle equipment and divers used by the U.S. Army, to explore every piece of wasteland, every jungle, every pond, lake, and every swamp and river in Naeshoba County, inch by inch. But to no avail.The traces of these three young people still did not find the slightest clue. In this combing of the investigation, they even found the body of another unnamed black man at the bottom of the swampy river leading to the Mississippi.Apparently also murdered at unknown times.Due to the difficulty of obtaining evidence, the murder case has never been solved since then.However, the discovery of the black body made the disappearance of the three college students feel more sinister. During this period, the families of three college students and the black leader Martin Luther King Jr. had come to this town, and what they felt was the obvious hostility towards them in the town.Martin Luther King once said afterwards that when he stood in Feizhen and faced the silent hostility and hatred of the white people around him, it was the most frightening moment in his life. For a time it seemed that the case could not be found out.However, rumors spread among the local white people, saying that the three foreign "instigators" simply went to some unknown place on purpose and did not show their faces on purpose.This was designed by Martin Luther King's organization to deliberately frame the people in this quiet, lawful and orderly town. According to the analysis, the FBI can quite confidently believe that this is a crime related to the local KKK, and they can also conclude with certainty that the local security police officer Rainey and his deputy Price are members of the KKK.Whether it was kidnapping or murder, the disappearance of three living young men could not have been done by a single person.However, the FBI just couldn't get any clues from the local residents. The President of the United States put more pressure on Hoover because it was an apparent test of the new civil rights law that had just been passed by Congress and immediately signed by the President.Hoover personally approved the FBI's strategy, trying to recruit KKK personnel to provide inside information to the FBI, popularly known as buying informants. With organized crime, covert activity is difficult to detect without insider intelligence from informants.Even if it is solved, without the informant to testify in court, according to the American judicial system, it will be difficult to persuade the jury to convict the defendant. This time, the stalemate in the case of the disappearance of college students in Feizhen also used the method of buying informants.While hundreds of agents of the FBI stepped up their search efforts and dug three feet into the ground, they also continued to visit and interview members of the KKK to create an atmosphere.It then announced a reward of between $5,000 and $30,000 for anyone who provided the whereabouts of the three college students.In this actually poor Mississippi town, the amount of money at that time was already quite a temptation. This approach finally worked.Agent Sullivan finally has a tip on a man.As for who this person was, Sullivan and the FBI director refused to tell even when asked by the attorney general.Because protecting the safety of informants is the professional norm of the FBI.In a closed town like Mississippi where the KKK is rampant, they have to worry about the man's death if his identity is revealed. From the information secretly provided by the informant, Agent Sullivan finally learned that three young college students were in front of him. After they were murdered, they were buried deeply under a dam. This is an artificial dam located deep in the swampy jungle, and the FBI dispatched a helicopter to find the location.Because it was on a piece of private land, it took the FBI another four days to obtain a ground-breaking search permit, and promised the owner compensation for the damage caused by digging the dam, and then dispatched large-scale earth-moving machinery from other places. This true story has been made into a movie.Although I already knew the ending of the story before watching this movie, I still can’t forget the uncontrollable excitement when I saw the excavator plow a deep gap, and the blue corner of the jeans was exposed in the red soil unique to the south. Grief and indignation.They are still young, whether it is the black student or the two white students, they all lived in the North, and they have already obtained their own right to pursue happiness.It was just an ideal of "all men are created equal" that led them into this dangerous place that they didn't know very well, and three young and sincere lives disappeared forever. Three college students are buried at the bottom of this gigantic dam.They were shot.Especially the black college student who was brutally beaten before being shot.After examining head to toe injuries that could only have been caused by iron bars and chains, the informed coroner said that he had never seen such horrific injuries in a single crime, only at the scene of a plane crash similar situation. The news shocked the whole country. The FBI finally figured out what happened in the middle of the night.After the three college students came out of the police station, they drove out.A group of more than a dozen KKK mobs were divided into several cars, led by the local security police officer Rainey and deputy police officer Price, led by a police car with flashing lights, chasing and fighting on the deserted country road. The student's car was stopped.They took the college students to a predetermined place to kill them, and then drove their cars to another place and burned them down. This is one of the most famous cases in the black civil rights movement, and we often read about this case when we read the history of various black civil rights movements.I remember it was a rainy night, and we stayed in a motel near the University of North Carolina.It was pouring rain outside, and we were reading another book called "Law and Order in the South" about the black civil rights movement.We encounter this case again. Although we are quite familiar with some details of the case, we read in the book that when the bodies of the three college students were found and the truth of the case was revealed, the instinctive reaction of the bottom-level white people in Fei Town and Neshoba County Instead of asking "Who did this?", I asked "Who said this?" Seeing this, I still couldn't hold back, rushed outside, opened the car door in the heavy rain to find the road map that came with the car.I want to see where this damn Feizhen is, and I have to visit this ghostly place one day.How could such a place support such a group of people.Although we have been to Mississippi, we really don't know where the town of Fei is.After searching for a long time, we finally found Feizhen on the map. It's a tiny dot in the vastness of Mississippi.Next to it is written in small characters: Feizhen.From the map, of course, nothing can be seen.However, we never dreamed that a few minutes later, we were stunned by the southern place name of another important historical case that happened at the same time-we saw the name of the small town we lived in in the same book! At about the same time as the murder of the Mississippi college student, another case became a national sensation.案子发生在佐治亚州的北部，距离1996年奥运会的亚特兰大市只有一百多公里。 这次的受害者是一名叫做培尼的黑人。他住在北方，有着一份完全正常的生活。培尼是首都华盛顿地区公共学校负责成人教育和职业教育的地方官员，同时他还是美国陆军预备役的中校。当然，他听说过南方的黑人生活状况，但是，作为一个习惯了正常社会的美国北方黑人，一定不可能想到，在民权运动的最后关头，一些南方地区会在面临社会变革的刺激下，变得如此凶险。 1964年夏天，培尼奉命在佐治亚州南部的属于联邦管辖的贝宁军事要塞，接受了两周的集训，然后开车北上回家。7月11日，他的车子经过了佐治亚州的雅典市。 雅典市是一个大学城，是佐治亚大学的所在地。今天，人们称这个美丽的小城是佐治亚的智慧和灵魂。因为历史长达两百多年的佐治亚大学是一个综合性大学，有着大量艺术和人文类的专业。这里有着来自世界各地的留学生。对于南方来说，这是一个思想活跃，气氛轻松的小城。这种轻松气氛还可以从这个小城的音乐特色中看出来。这个只有八万人的大学城今天有着近两百个乐队。在各种节日，你可以看到各种族裔的人们坐在草地上，欣赏着白人的乡村音乐和黑人的蓝调，并且随着摇滚乐起舞，一片平和景象。1996年奥运会的足球决赛就是在雅典市的佐治亚大学体育场里举行的。可是，谁会想到，1964年7月11日的一场悲剧，就是从这里开始的。 只要离开雅典市小小的以校园为中心的市区，就完全是另一番景象。那是佐治亚州典型的保守乡村。在三十多年前，这种区别就更大了。就在密西西比案件发生的同一个夏天，雅典市附近的乡村白人，特别是KKK的人，正在激地传言说马丁·路德·金即将派民权工作者前来鼓动黑人参与选举，推动民权法在南方乡镇的实施。当地以盖斯特为首的几个KKK紧张到了这个地步，以致于他们仅仅因为在雅典市看到培尼是一个驾着外州牌照汽车的黑人，就认定他就是前来扰乱他们南方秩序的“煽动者”。 他们从雅典市开始尾随着培尼的汽车，来到邻近的麦迪逊县的一座桥边。那是森林茂密牧场旷然的乡村，就是在今天，也很少有车辆经过。于是，光天化日之下，他们居然拦截枪杀了培尼。书上有培尼的汽车照片，车上到处是浓烈的鲜血。书中提到的案发地点，距离我们家只有十五英里。这个两度审判，最终进入联邦最高法院的案子，审判的法庭距离我们家不到三英里。我们惊讶地面面相嘘：不知我们友好的邻居杰米老头和他和善的妻子埃维伦，会不会就是当年的陪审员？ 我们之所以对陪审员的问题如此敏感，就是因为，这两个案子的发生和破案，固然是黑人民权运动史中的两个重大事件，这两个案子的审理，更是美国司法史上的重要事件。 这封信够长的了，关于这两个案子的审理，我还是在下一封信再给你讲下去吧。 wish it is good! Linda