There, at a place known as Rock Cut Road, they were shot dead from close range.To get a first-hand insight into the passions and dark anger that this case arouses 41 years later, one need do nothing more than knock on the door of number 11340, Road 515, the same road on which Mr Killen lives and on which the men were killed. The house is located just a few hundred metres from the murder site and is listed as belonging to Morrice Mowdy, a man said to be a long-time friend of Mr Killen’s.When The Independent visited the house, seeking opinions on the upcoming trial, a small wiry man aged in his 70s or older launched an attack with a metal bar that resulted in injuries which required hospital treatment. “If that’s what you’re here for you can get away,” he yelled, before reaching into a red pick-up truck and grabbing the piece of metal. The local sheriff’s office – thankfully transformed from four decades ago – offered to press assault charges but the offer was declined.At the hospital, a black security guard, offered this assessment. “If you think it’s bad now, imagine what it was like back in the Sixties when these people were younger and stronger and if you had been my colour …”Mr Killen himself lives further along Road 515.

In the garden in front of his house, there is a board with the words of the Ten Commandments. While he has always denied involvement in the killings, in the interviews he has given he has expressed little regret over the death of the three “communists” who were “threatening Mississippi’s way of life”. Mr Killen, who broke his legs in March while cutting a tree, declined to speak to The Independent but he said in an interview with a far-right website: “I have pastored churches all through Neshoba County for over 50 years. I am well thought of by most everyone.”Mr Killen was one of 18 local men originally charged over the killings. Seven, including the deputy sheriff, the Klan’s “Imperial Wizard” Sam Bowers, and the trigger man, Wayne Roberts, were convicted Eight were found not guilty.

In three of the cases – including that of Mr Killen, who was described in court as a senior Klan organiser or “Kleagle” – the jury was unable to reach a verdict. At the time The New York Times described the guilty verdicts as “a measure of the quiet revolution that is taking place in southern attitudes”, although a perhaps truer insight came from the trial judge, William Cox, a supporter of segregation. He imposed sentences of no more than 10 years and said : “They killed one nigger, one Jew, and a white man – I gave them all what I thought they deserved.”Mr Killen might not have been charged but for a comment by Bowers, who is serving a life sentence for a separate crime. In 1999 he told a state archivist in an interview that he had thwarted justice over the killings of the three men and that he did not mind going to jail because a fellow Klansman had got away with murder.

The interview was supposed to have been private and released only after his death but the Clarion-Ledger newspaper got hold of a copy and published it, putting pressure on the authorities to reopen the case. A grand jury found there was sufficient evidence to charge Mr Killen.The task of prosecuting Mr Killen has fallen to Mark Duncan, the district attorney for Neshoba County and a man who has grown up with its dark history. While he denies that the case has been brought to trial simply to try to heal the community’s wounds, he hopes that will be the outcome.”I look at the evidence,” he said. “As far as the importance to the community, I think everybody will be glad to get it behind them. It’s something that a lot of people would not want brought up.

Not for the wrong reasons but they look at getting more negative publicity.”He said: “If we get some good publicity out of this it’s a good thing, but that is not the motivation for bringing the case. I have tried real hard to treat this case like just like any other and that the evidence has to be your guide. But I’m also aware of the history of the case, you cannot help but be.”Driving around Philadelphia and retracing the journey the three activists took that afternoon, even driving out north of town to the lonely and deserted Bogue Chitto swamp where their burnt-out car was discovered, it is obvious that many people are worried about the upcoming trial. Few of the town’s white residents who were approached wished to be interviewed. One man, probably aged in his 20s, who declined to be named, simply said: “Whoever did it, and I mean whoever, should be punished. But at the same time we are just starting to get over this and it’s going to bring it all back up again.”By “this”, of course, he meant the relationship between blacks and whites – a topic that many prefer not to discuss even though the subject is never far away. Some members of the black community say that while things have outwardly changed in Philadelphia, underlying racist attitudes still exist.Leslie Rush, 61, was among those members of the Mt Zion church visited by the activists on the day they were killed.