Peering into segregationist state of mind

updated 12:56 p.m. ET March 18, 2007

This story contains language that some may find objectionable.

JACKSON, Miss. - James Ford Seale has remained publicly silent as he awaits trial next month on kidnapping and conspiracy charges in the 1964 deaths of two black teenagers. But four decades ago, he offered his white supremacist opinions freely, to anyone who would listen.

In a signed letter using racial epithets, he railed against the recently enacted Civil Rights Act and exhorted fellow white Mississippians to wage a holy war against integration.

The letter was published in the Advocate, a then-pro segregation newspaper in Meadville, on July 23, 1964, just 11 days after the bodies of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore were pulled from the murky waters of the Mississippi River.

“The time has come,” Seale’s letter said, “for the Christian people of this nation to stand up and fight for what is right in the eyes of God and man and not what a few men in congress or the senate decided on under pressure from the niggers and communists.”

On April 2, Seale is scheduled to go on trial in the deaths of Dee and Moore. He is 71 years old, a former policeman and crop-duster who might have died without facing these charges, but for another old Klansman who agreed to testify against him.

Grim time capsule
U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton could use the words of the letter against Seale. It “shows his state of mind. It shows lots of stuff,” he said.

Indeed, Seale’s letter is a time capsule filled with ideologies from a grim era.

“These people were religious fanatics,” said historian John Dittmer, a professor of history at DePauw University and author of “Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi.”

“Yes, they were racist, but they didn’t think of themselves as bad people. They thought of themselves as doing God’s will when they murdered people.”

AP This 1964 Mississippi State Highway Patrol booking photo shows James Ford Seale, after his arrest in Mississippi for the killings of two young black men. James Ford Seale, a former Mississippi sheriff's deputy, was arrested Jan. 24, in the 1964 slayings of two black teenagers.

The letter, which ran on the back page of the Advocate, includes several passages from the Bible that Seale interprets to mean Christians should fight, to the death if necessary, to stop the mixing of races. It was a common theme for members of the Ku Klux Klan as the civil rights movement made Mississippi its primary target.

The letter contains themes similar to those expressed in an unsigned essay titled “A Plaintive Cry,” attributed to Seale by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.

Repeated requests by The Associated Press for interviews with Seale or his defense team were not answered, so it is unclear whether Seale still holds the same opinions. But at the time, his thoughts on the issues of the day were clear.

“The so called Civil Rights Bill is nothing less than a giant step to communist dictatorship of America,” he wrote.

“Why should we the people of this country comply with this bill when the President of the U.S. can go against the constitution and laws of the U.S. that our forefathers wrote by sending troops to Arkansas and Miss., armed with bayonetts to force two coons into our schools.”

Seale was served a subpoena by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee at a meeting of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The groups was headed by Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers, who would be prosecuted for violent acts against civil rights advocates.

‘MILITANTLY DETERMINED’
Klan meetings conducted at the time were full of religious rhetoric, according to Charles Marsh, whose book “God’s Long Summer” chronicles the role of religion on both sides of the civil rights movement. Bowers thought of himself as a “warrior priest” and peppered recruiting fliers and speeches with religious references, March wrote.

One Klan poster cited in Marsh’s book declared: “Members are Christians who are anxious to preserve not only their souls for all Eternity, but who are MILITANTLY DETERMINED, God willing, to save their lives, and the Life of this Nation, in order that their descendants shall enjoy the same, full, God-given blessings of True Liberty that we have been permitted to enjoy up to now.”

J.K. Greer, a 74-year-old former Klansman who said he attended meetings with Seale’s brother and father, scoffed at the idea that the Bible teaches racial hatred.

“It’s got nothing to do with God, now. It was the people that said you wasn’t supposed to integrate, you wasn’t supposed to associate with these people,” he said. “Of course we know now that wasn’t right. But that’s the way people felt.”

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