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First Murder Charge in ’64 Civil Rights Killings of 3.

The most infamous unresolved case from America’s civil rights struggle four decades ago – the 1964 abduction and killing of three voter-registration volunteers by nightriders on a lonely rural road in Mississippi – was revived last night with the arrest of a longtime leader of the Ku Klux Klan, the authorities announced.

The suspect, Edgar Ray Killen, a 79-year-old preacher who, investigators say, organized and led two carloads of Klansmen on the night of the killings, was arrested at his home in Philadelphia, Miss., and charged with the murders of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, Sheriff Larry Myers of Neshoba County said.

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Seven Klansmen were convicted and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 3 years to 10 years, although none served more than 6 years. Mr. Killen was released after there was a deadlock by an all-white jury.