Michael Schwerner
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Michael Schwerner (November 6, 1939 – June 21, 1964), called Mickey by friends and colleagues, was a CORE field worker killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, by the Ku Klux Klan in response to the civil-rights work he coordinated, which included promoting registration to vote among Mississippi African Americans.
Born and raised in New York, he attended Michigan State University, originally intending to become a veterinarian. He transferred to Cornell University, however, and switched his major to sociology, going on after graduation to the School of Social Work at Columbia University. While an undergraduate at Cornell, he integrated the school's chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity.
His passionate dedication to civil rights made him a marked man in Mississippi, and he had been a long-sought target of the Klan.
Schwerner's murder occurred near the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi, where he and fellow workers, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were undertaking field work for CORE.
The three (Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman) were initially arrested by Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price for an alleged traffic violation and taken to the jail in Neshoba County. They were released that evening and on the way back to Meridian were stopped by two carloads of KKK members on a remote rural road. The men approached their car and then shot and killed Schwerner, then Goodman, and finally Chaney.
The film Mississippi Burning is loosely based on the murders and ensuing FBI investigation (as is the TV-movie ), and the events leading up to the deaths of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney were dramatised in Murder in Mississippi.
On August 4, 1980, Ronald Reagan launched his presidential election campaign with a speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi in which he declared his support for states' rights. Some critics saw his choice of Philadelphia as the launching point for his campaign as an attempt to further the Republican Party's southern strategy.
On January 7, 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, an outspoken white supremacist nicknamed "Preacher," pleaded "Not Guilty" to Schwerner's murder, but was found guilty of manslaughter on June 21, 2005.
See also
External links
- [Biography of Michael Schwerner] from University of Missouri - Kansas City Law School
- [Civil Rights worker's sculpture]
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