Justice at Long Last

A Civil Rights demonstration in Baton Rouge, sometime during the early 1960's.

Jury selection is beginning in the trial of James Ford Seale:

James Seale, 71, denies killing Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee.

The former sheriff's deputy was first arrested in 1964. The authorities later freed him, citing lack of evidence.

The case was reopened after a campaign by Mr Moore's brother, who had discovered that Mr Seale was still alive. He was rearrested in January...

Prosecutors said that in May 1964 Mr Seale aimed a shotgun at the two black men while fellow Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members beat them with tree branches.

According to the indictment, Mr Seale and the others attached weights to the two men, took them out on the water in a boat and threw them into the river.

Good--to the extent it can, let justice prevail. It's been a long time, but hopefully the evidence will be sufficient to convict or acquit, depending on...the evidence itself. There's no need to convict Mr. Seale before the fact are weighed.

That said, I think it's important to remember that the Civil Rights movement--which is ongoing--was and remains quite a bit more complicated than is generally acknowledged. It seems as if things have been compressed into just a few, discrete events: Rosa Parks, Little Rock, Selma, the March on Washington/I Have a Dream Oration (I deliberately put the latter two out of sequence because I bet a lot of people think Selma occurred before, not after, the March on Washington)...the Civil Rights Struggle speaks volumes about our country, in all its good, bad, and ugly. We could learn a LOT from studying the movement, and maybe a more than a few things we don't really want to know, but should.