A Race Against the Clock

by Brian Boney

On June 21, 1964, civil rights workers Michael Scherner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney came to Mississippi to participate in what was known as Freedom Summer, a voter registration project dedicated to expanding the number of African-American voters in the South. The trio was arrested by a Neshoba County deputy sheriff near Philadelphia, Mississippi, but after being held in jail for several hours, they were released. They were later shot to death and buried fifteen feet beneath an earthen dam, allegedly by members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The state of Mississippi refused to pursue murder charges at the time; however, in 1967, several men were tried on federal civil rights violations for the murders, and among them was Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen-who was not convicted. Decades later, in 2005, the state of Mississippi indicted Killen, who was then eighty years old, on three counts of second-degree murder, even though all parties involved, including the prosecution, agreed he was neither present at the murder scene, nor did he participate in the murders.
While numerous stories and documentaries have covered this historical event, never before has it been seen through the eyes of one of the accused participants. Killen's account brings about a good number of questions: Was he a scapegoat? A political sacrifice? Was he convicted for public appeasement, a pawn in the political agenda of certain high-ranking officials?
In A Race Against the Clock: The Authorized Biography of Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen, author Brian Boney brings readers a compelling account of these events-from a different perspective. This is the other side of the story. As only Mr. Killen can tell it.