The Talk of the Town: Visiting Preacher Killen
A sign on the narrow road that leads to Edgar Ray Killen's house, in the low hills southeast of Philadelphia, Mississippi, reads "If You Don't Believe in God, the Hellfire Awaits You." On the morning that I visited him, a few years ago, Killen, a reputed Ku Klux Klansman, was waiting for me, a shotgun in his sunburned arms. "I told you I ain't talking with you," he said, superfluously. Killen is known around Philadelphia as Preacher. He used to preside over a small church nearby, where he taught the inerrancy of the Bible and the superiority of the Caucasian race, but that day he was apparently caring for his weapons. "My gun's clean and ready," he said.
We had spoken by telephone earlier, and I had already come to his house once that day, but his dogs, their teeth bared, had surrounded my car. I returned an hour later with a bag of hamburgers from McDonald's.
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Prisoners
