Edgar Ray Killen, the former KKK leader responsible for the deaths of three civil rights workers in 1964 was today sentenced to sixty years in prison.

Jurors took just 5 1/2 hours to convict the former Ku Klux Klan leader of manslaughter in the deaths of three men whose names are synonymous with the violence of the civil rights era: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. Graying black men who grew up in a segregated world, but lived to see it end, held their faces in their hands and sobbed in the audience. Outside the courtroom, there were cheers.

See our sister site the One People’s Project for more background information on Egdar Killen.