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Arrington's strategy would be to discredit Pitts, as he did in the earlier trials. He would bring up the money federal agents paid Pitts back then and would pronounce the government's main witness "bought and sold." And Arrington would revive old allegations that the FBI let Pitts cavort with a mysterious blond while he was in custody. "I got pictures of her in a car with Billy Roy," Arrington boasts. It was these doubts about the government's star witness, he says, not jury tampering, that hung the previous Bowers juries. He thinks they could work again.
Still, Arrington worries that prosecutors will persuade several Klansmen to testify against Bowers. He fears the changes in state politics that, he says, are driving Moore and Lindsey to work so hard to convict Bowers. "Since the blacks are voting now, that has given them a boost," Arrington says. "I was district attorney before they could vote."
Neil McMillen, a history professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, believes that a Klan "die-hard" or two could still make it on the jury and produce another mistrial. But this time, notably, it is the Dahmers and their supporters who seem to have the most faith in the system. "I think the jury is going to work out just fine," says Fairley, the friend who warned Dahmer that registering blacks to vote could get him killed. "Things are a lot different now in Hattiesburg."
One thing that is different, as Arrington indicated, is black voter registration--a gateway to jury service. Up from fewer than 100 in 1960, black voters today number more than 18,000 in Forrest County--about 30% of the total. The attacks by Bowers and other Klansmen on civil rights workers only served to accelerate their efforts to win full participation for blacks in public life. In that sense, whatever happens in court to Sam Bowers, he and his kind have already lost the great struggle of their lives. Vernon Dahmer won.