Jury selection begins Monday for a 45-year-old civil rights case in Alabama

Kathy Lohr of National Public Radio reports that Jury selection begins Monday for a 45-year-old civil rights case in Alabama. A former state trooper is charged with murder in the shooting death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a black protester who was killed in 1965. Jackson's death united civil rights leaders across the country and led to the historic Selma-to-Montgomery march.

Marion, Ala., 1965...In the Deep South of 1965, segregation was the law of the land. Anyone who protested against the system was met with violence. Not far from Selma, Ala., in Marion, a group of African Americans was gathering in a church at night. Alabama state troopers, including James Bonard Fowler, were called in to break up the meeting, and, using billy clubs, they began beating protesters, including 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson.

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Muslim Civil Rights Group Endorses NAACP Condemnation Of Tea Party For Harboring Racists

CAIR, the national group focused on protecting civil rights for the nation's Muslim population, is standing in support of the NAACP's resolution calling on Tea Party leaders to repudiate racism in their ranks. In a strongly-worded statement released this afternoon, CAIR spokesperson Ibrahim Hooper said that his group shares the NAACP's concerns about racist rhetoric found among tea partiers.

"If the Tea Party wishes to be taken seriously by mainstream Americans, it must repudiate all those who express or promote extremist, racist or bigoted views while claiming to be affiliated with the movement," he said.

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New Prison Study: Race and Racism Placed at Center of Why U.S. Imprisons So Many of Its Citizens

AlterNet / By Liliana Segura

Two criminologists have concluded, in a new study investigating public attitudes behind harsh sentencing, that the warehousing of African Americans and other minorities is no accident. Rather, "racial resentments are inextricably entwined in public punitiveness." In other words, racism and the rise of "tough on crime" policies go hand in hand.

James Unnever of the University of South Florida-Sarasota and Francis Cullen of the University of Cincinnati acknowledge the "lengthy roster" of previous studies on race and the U.S. prison system; yet theirs manages to contribute something crucial to the current debate: "… [G]iven the large body of research that documents a substantive association between punitiveness and racial animus," they write, "it is somewhat disconcerting that theories of the mass-incarceration movement do not place race and racism at the center of their explanation for why the United States imprisons so many of its citizens."

Liliana Segura Continues

Federal Judge to Mississippi: Cease School Segregation

US District Judge Tom Lee has given the Walthall County School District in Mississippi 30 days to amend its student transfer policy and ordered an immediate halt to the alleged "clustering" of white students into certain classes in Tylertown, Miss., elementary schools.

"The district shall cease using race in the assignment of students to classrooms in a manner that results in the racial segregation of students," Judge Lee said in his eight-page order.

"The district shall randomly assign students to classrooms at the Tylertown Elementary Schools through the use of a student management software program," the judge said.

The action stems from a federal desegregation order issued in August 1970 – nearly 40 years ago. The case was closed for lack of activity in 2001.

In 2007, lawyers with the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division contacted the Mississippi school district to monitor its compliance with the 1970 desegregation order. The action revealed two alleged violations.

The district was allowing more than 300 students – most of them white – to transfer from their assigned schools to a predominately white school, the Salem Attendance Center, outside their residential zone, according to court documents.

The second alleged violation involved grouping white students into a few designated classes at three other schools in Tylertown. The action created a significant number of all-black classrooms at each elementary grade level, documents say.

“It is unacceptable for school districts to act in a way that encourages or tolerates the resegregation of public schools,” said Thomas Perez, who heads the Civil Rights Division.

Warren Richey of the Christian Science Monitor continues:

Appeals Court Affirms Conviction Of Reputed Klansman In Civil Rights Era Cold Case In Miss.

James Ford Seale (Daily Mail, UK)

A federal appeals court has upheld the 2007 conviction of a reputed Ku Klux Klan member in the kidnapping of two black men who were abducted and killed in rural Mississippi in 1964.

In a 2-1 ruling, the panel of judges said the evidence in the case against James Ford Seale was sufficient for the jury conviction in the trial that took place 43 years after the crimes. Friday's decision came from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans.

The judge who dissented said that too much time had elapsed to try Seale and that incriminating statements Seale made should have been barred from his trial.

Seale, now 74, is in federal prison in Indiana. A Mississippi jury convicted him of two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and he was given three life sentences.

CBS News reports--
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