EAST CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI 285 Sharpe. On July 17, 1969, the defendants in the Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner case were denied a new trial by the U. S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and, eventually, by the U. S. Supreme Court. The Civil Rights Movement Forges Ahead The Klan launched terrorist attacks against members of the Jewish community, African Americans, and civil rights workers, bombing Temple Beth Israel in Jackson on September 18, 1967, and the home of Rabbi Perry Nussbaum a few months later. Also, the Jackson homes of Dr. William T. Bush, Dean of Tougaloo College, and Robert Kochtitzky were bombed. In 1968, between January and May, terrorist attacks in Meridian included the burnings of African American churches, such as Pilgrim Rest Methodist Church on Old Eighth Street Road, Sun Light Baptist Church, Rose Hill Methodist Church, Newell Chapel, and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church on Highway 45. Meridian Mayor Al Key facilitated the Committee and Conscience and raised $75,000 from white citizens to help rebuild the African American churches. Violence continued with gun blasts into the home of Dr. Hobert Kornegay, a prominent African American dentist in Meridian, and the burning of Mount Zion Baptist Church on Tenth Avenue. A few weeks later, on May 28, Temple Beth Israel in Meridian was bombed. A cross was burned on Mayor Key’s front lawn, and Meridian attorney Bill Ready received death threats as well. On June 29, Tommy Tarrants and Kathy Ainsworth, a school teacher at a Citizens’ Council school in Jackson, drove into Meridian from Jackson to meet Wayne and Raymond Roberts. The Roberts brothers had been suspects in several church burnings, but were now acting as FBI informants. The brothers had tipped off the FBI about Tarrants and Ainsworth and the plans to bomb the Meridian home of Meyer Davidson, a Jewish supporter of the civil rights movement. By the time Tarrants and Ainsworth arrived at the Davidson home, local authorities had moved Mr. Davidson and his family to a place of safety and were staking out the home. Probably no other politician in the East Central region produced more harmony among politicians and everyday citizens, or accomplished more for Mississippi and American veterans, than G.V. “Sonny” Montgomery. Tarrants exited his car to place twenty-nine sticks of dynamite attached to a clock on the front porch of the Davidson home. It was set to detonate at 2 a.m. Ainsworth waited in the car. Law enforcement officers moved in, and Tarrants darted toward the car to retrieve his submachine. Shots were fired and Ainsworth cried out that she had been hit. She died in the car while Tarrants, though shot multiple times, floored the accelerator and took off. The police chased Tarrants through North Meridian streets and shot out one of his tires. He leapt from the car and emptied his submachine into a police cruiser, injuring a police officer.At the hospital, when the doctors first got to Tarrants, he had no pulse or heartbeat. Thanks to Meridian orthopedic surgeon Dr. Leslie Rush, Tarrants survived. He would later be convicted and would serve time in Parchman State Penitentiary.After his release eight years later, he became co- pastor of an interracial church in Washington, D.C. The Long Process of Healing In 1994, Byron De La Beckwith was convicted in the 1963 assassination of NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers. With this success, many Mississippi citizens urged Attorney General Jim Hood to reopen the investigation into the Goodman-Schwerner-Chaney murders. The case was reopened, thanks in part to investigative reporting by Clarion-Ledger veteran Jerry Mitchell, and Edgar Ray Killen was arrested. On June 21, 2005, a mixed-race jury returned guilty manslaughter verdicts forty-one years to the day after the murders occurred. Circuit Court Judge Marcus Gordon set Killen’s sentencing. Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood said, “There’s justice for all in Mississippi.” Neshoba County District Attorney Mark Duncan said, “Today we’ve shown the rest of the world the true character of the people of Neshoba County.” Then Secretary of State Dick Molpus issued an apology to the families of the three slain men in 1989. Leroy Clemons grew up in Philadelphia, but as a teenager he knew hardly anything about the 1964 murders. He would become president of the NAACP’s Philadelphia chapter in 2003 and would help form the Philadelphia Coalition, a group dedicated to finally healing the wounds left by that tragic event. The Coalition was instrumental in