The Deep South revisited at KKK trial

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Source: Telegraph.UK

Forty three years after Ku Klux Klansmen allegedly abducted, beat and drowned two young black men, two of the gang stared at each other across a courtroom yesterday as one broke the Klan's most precious oath and gave evidence against the other.

United not only by their past but also by their need to wear court-supplied hearing aids, James Ford Seale and Charles Edwards both affected a studied nonchalance to their alleged crimes as the latter recounted how they pounced on two local 19-year-olds on the slimmest of pretexts after hearing that black radicals were smuggling guns into Mississippi.

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A copy of the constitution of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi was read out in court, despite defence objections that it would "arouse the prejudice" of jurors.

In it, members swear to such things as to "remain constantly alert to the satanic forces of evil" and to "die to preserve the spirit of Christian civilisation".

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/06/wklan106.xml