The Protectors

After the 1964 nightrider slaying of Lemuel Penn, a Negro educator from Washington, D.C., a Georgia jury wasted little time acquitting Klansmen Joseph H. Sims and Cecil W. Myers of murder. Despite the verdict, the Justice Department went ahead and built its own case by dusting off an obscure anticonspiracy law dating back to Reconstruction days. Last week, in the small U.S. District Court in Athens, Ga., that law brought Sims and Myers to trial.

No Emotion. The 96-year-old statute under which they and a third Klansman, George H. Turner, were accused makes it a crime to "conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any citizen in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States." Though the law was intended to encourage Negro voting, the U.S. Supreme Court (TIME, April 8) recently opened the way for the trial by interpreting it to cover any attempt to block a citizen's right to interstate travel; at the time of his murder, Penn, an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel, was driving home after training at Fort Benning, Ga.

Sims, 43, an Athens machinist, and Myers, 26, a textile worker, showed no emotion when U.S. Attorney Floyd Buford, a Georgia native, accused them of "actively participating" in the slaying. His chief witness, ex-Klansman Thomas "Big Tom" Stephens, a truck driver, related that a garage operator told him the night of the slaying that Sims and Myers "was out chasin' a nigger car with D.C. tags on it." Stephens also testified that he later heard the pair "discuss a shootin'," adding: "I heard one say he tried to get the other one not to kill, not to shoot the nigger."

From other witnesses, Buford elicited testimony to show that the murder was the climax of "a broader conspiracy" among the three defendants and other Klansmen: they plotted to terrorize Negroes throughout the Athens area. Earlier in 1964, police officials testified, Sims pistol-whipped an elderly Negro. A Negro garage attendant told of being set upon at about the same time by 18 hooded Klansmen and beaten with a strap by one whom he made out to be Sims. On another occasion, a witness related, shots were fired at a Negro apartment building from three carloads of whites, Turner and Myers among them. Taking the witness stand, Negro John Klink dramatically removed his sunglasses and showed the jury his right eye--blinded by one of the shots.

Guns, Revolvers & Clubs. Even after the Penn murder, a group of Athens rowdies traveled to nearby Taliaferro County, where they beat and shot at a one-legged Negro farmer, after halting his car on a country road. Taliaferro Sheriff Milton Moore identified Sims and Myers as two of the whites, and the jury was shown weapons seized from their cars: six sawed-off shotguns, four .38-cal. revolvers, a .22-cal. rifle, a length of heavy chain, and several wooden clubs bearing carved swastikas or the letters KKK.

Defense Attorney James Hudson, 36, had his own explanation for his clients' conduct. "These pore little old country boys," Hudson told the all-white jury, "entered into a conspiracy all right--a conspiracy to protect you and me, to keep racial violence from tearing apart Athens, Georgia." Whether the jury was convinced remained a secret. Though a verdict was reached, U.S. District Judge William A. Bootle ordered it sealed, pending this week's trial--on the same federal conspiracy charges--of three other Athens Klansmen accused of harassing Negroes.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.