Note that this is a recent mayor of Philadelphia, Miss. From the AP (via the Nashville Tennessean):

The defense rested Monday in the trial of a former Ku Klux Klanman in the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers after a former mayor testified that the white-supremacist group was a “peaceful organization.”

Harlan Majure, who was mayor of this rural Mississippi town in the 1990s, said Edgar Ray Killen was a good man and that the part-time preacher's Klan membership would not change his opinion.

Majur said the Klan “did a lot of good up here” and said he was not personally aware of the organization's bloody past.

“As far as I know it's a peaceful organization,” Majure said. His comment was met with murmurs in the packed courtroom.