Charles Marcus Edwards is a deacon at a church in Meadville, Mississippi and a self-declared Klansmen. In 1964, Edwards, along with James Ford Seale, faced state murder charges for the deaths of two black men, Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, but charges were dropped due to the close cooperation of law enforcement with the Ku Klux Klan. There were rumors circulating amongst members of the KKK that black Muslims were preparing for "insurrection" by bringing guns into Franklin County. Klan members, including Seale, picked up Moore and Dee while they were hitchhiking near Meadville, and beat them with beanpoles until they were unconscious, repeatedly asking the pair to identify who was behind the county's "Negro trouble". Moore and Dee were unconscious but still breathing when the