A JFP blogger posted this link in our media forum to an AP story about Philadelphia and the people's attitudes toward the trial. I decided to move it to the Neshoba Blog. It begins:
Hicks. Rednecks. Racists. People who live in this town of 7,300 have heard the epithets slung their way for decades. And many — black and white — cringe as they anticipate how the world will view their town when reputed Ku Klux Klansman and part-time preacher Edgar Ray Killen goes on trial Monday in the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers.
"People make it sound like it's a hick town. It's not," said Bryon Whitley, a white 21-year-old who works in a music store on the downtown square, just across from the red brick Neshoba County Courthouse.