forgiveness series
I still remember my shock when I learned that Byron De La Beckwith was a peaceful resident of the small town in Tennessee where I live. De La Beckwith had been tried twice but not found guilty of the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers. Evers was a prominent civil rights leader in Mississippi, who was killed by a rifle shot as he walked through his front yard carrying an armful of NAACP T-shirts emblazoned with the message “Jim Crow Must Go”. De La Beckwith was tried a third time (31 years after his crime) and found guilty; he subsequently died in prison. Does it matter that De La Beckwith was diagnosed with schizophrenia? Does it matter that he was a member of the Christian Identity Movement, a church that believes non-Caucasians have no soul and can never earn God’s favor?