Ex-Klansman Found Guilty of 1964 Killings

Federal authorities in the US are under pressure to make a final effort to bring unsolved race crimes from the civil rights era to trial after a 71-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman was found guilty of charges over the 1964 deaths of two black teenagers.

James Seale was convicted on Thursday of kidnapping and conspiracy in the killings of Henry Dee and Charles Moore, who were found dead in the Mississippi river after they went missing while hitchhiking. The federal jury heard that the teenagers had been brutally beaten before being dropped into the river tied to heavy weights. Seale now faces a life sentence.

The focus has now swung to up to 100 other unpunished killings from the 1950s and 60s, when the KKK was particularly active in attempting to intimidate activists into dropping their campaign for racial equality.

Under a bill passing through Congress such cases will be handled through the federal justice department, to speed up evidence-gathering. It is a race against the clock, with the chance of successful prosecutions fading as suspects and potential witnesses pass away. Some believe Seale's trial in Jackson will be one of the last.

Next month James Fowler is expected to be charged in Alabama with the 1965 killing of Jimmie Jackson - which triggered the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march famously attacked by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.