Mississippi Exonerates Clyde Kennard

^{Category: Race and Equal Opportunity}

When I reported last week on Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's refusal to pardon Clyde Kennard, I didn't really expect the story to have a happy ending. Certainly not this quickly. Certainly not under this administration.

I may have underestimated Governor Barbour:

A circuit judge today threw out the 1960 burglary conviction of a late Korean War veteran, saying the African-American sergeant was wrongly imprisoned.

Forrest County Circuit Judge Bob Helfrich granted a petition for Clyde Kennard's exoneration that included backers such as Gov. Haley Barbour, who had earlier rejected granting Kennard a pardon, despite concluding Kennard was innocent ...

In the 1960 trial, Johnny Roberts testified Kennard put him up to stealing $25 in chicken feed. Forty-five years later, Roberts told The Clarion-Ledger that Kennard did nothing illegal, that he was threatened into testifying against Kennard.

"Martin Luther King Jr. once said that the 'moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice,' " said Steven Drizin, who represents the Kennard family and heads Northwestern University School of Law's Center on Wrongful Convictions in Chicago. "It took 46 years, but the moral arc in Mississippi has finally bent toward justice in the case of Clyde Kennard."

Amen. After I posted the blog entry last week, I received a gracious email from Barry Bradford, the high school teacher who worked with his students to press the State of Mississippi to exonerate Mr. Kennard. His web site is the single best place to look for background information on the case. Kudos to Mr. Bradford, his student volunteers, the fine journalists at the Clarion-Ledger who pressed this case, Judge Robert Helfrig, and District Attorney Jon Mark Weathers. And maybe, just maybe, Governor Haley Barbour.

Within the next few weeks, I will be preparing a feature on unresolved civil rights cases that still need our attention: in Mississippi alone, for instance, the civil rights era murder cases of Henry Dee and Charles Moore, and of Wharlest Jackson Sr., remain unresolved despite clear evidence indicating the identities of the perpetrators. There is a great deal of work that still needs to be done.

But today, I have nothing but good news to report from the great state of Mississippi. The government that persecuted Clyde Kennard in life has finally done justice to his legacy.

See also:

• Montana Governor Pardons 78, Mississippi Governor Pardons None
• Songs of the Civil Rights Movement
• Clarion-Ledger Journalist Honored for Civil Rights Coverage