Mississippi civil rights worker murders
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The Mississippi Civil Rights Workers Murders involved the 1964 slayings of three political activists during the American Civil Rights Movement.
The murders of James Chaney, a 21-year-old black man from Meridian, Mississippi, Andrew Goodman, a 20-year-old anthropology student from New York, and Michael Schwerner, a 24-year-old social worker also from New York, helped symbolize the dangers of the civil rights movement as part of what became known as "Freedom Summer."The murders of the three men occurred in Philadelphia, Mississippi, on June 21, 1964, just one day after the trio had arrived in Mississippi. The men had just finished a week-long indoctrination on the Miami University campus in Oxford, Ohio regarding strategies on how to register blacks to vote.
After getting a haircut from an African-American barber in Meridian, the three men headed to Longdale, 50 miles away in Neshoba County, in order to inspect the ruins of Mount Zion Methodist Church. The church, a meeting place for civil rights group had been burned just five days earlier.
Before they left the area, they stopped by the local office of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), an umbrella group of four civil rights organizations. Schwerner, aware that the station wagon's license number had been given to members of the notorious local Citizen's Council, told COFO workers to contact the FBI if he hadn't called them by 4:30 p.m.
At approximately 5:00, the blue Ford carrying the trio was stopped by Neshoba County deputy Cecil Price, who arrested Chaney for allegedly driving 35 miles over the speed limit. He also booked Goodman and Schwerner, "for investigation."
While awaiting their release, they were given a dinner of spoon bread, green peas, potatoes and salad. Chaney was then fined $20 and the three men were ordered to leave the county. Price followed them to the edge of town, heading toward Meridian on state Highway 19 at approximately 10:30 p.m.
Following Schwerner's instructions, COFO workers phoned the FBI, which claimed they had no evidence to investigate the possible crime. COFO also called the Mississippi Highway Patrol, which simply issued a missing person's bulletin. On June 23, a phone tip led the local FBI office to the Bogue Chitto swamp, 12 miles northeast of Philadelphia, Mississippi, and on a Choctaw Indian reservation. Upon arrival, the officers found the charred remains of the station wagon, with three of the hubcaps having been removed by the Choctaws. They also realized that the site was in the opposite direction of what Price had told investigators.
Local officials were hardly sympathetic to the situation, with Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey saying, "They're just hiding and trying to cause a lot of bad publicity for this part of the state." Mississippi governor Paul Johnson also dismissed concern by simply stating, "They could be in Cuba."
Forty-four days later the men's bodies were found on Olen Barrage's Old Jolly Farm, six miles northeast of Philadelphia. The break in the case had come after the FBI offered to pay $25,000 for inside information. The subsequent autopsies showed that Goodman and Schwerner had been shot once in the heart with a .38-caliber bullet, while Chaney had been shot three times after being severely beaten.
Eighteen male suspects were put on trial in 1967, with only seven of the men being found guilty (see U.S. v. Cecil Price et. al.). Two of the defendants, E.G. Barnett, a Democratic candidate for sheriff, and Edgar Ray Killen, a local minister, had been strongly implicated in the murder according to witnesses, but a deadlocked jury set them free.
For much of the next four decades, the murders were ignored from a legal perspective, but a series of films dramatized the events. In 1974, a CBS made-for-television movie aired, [[Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan]], co-starring Wayne Rogers and Ned Beatty. This was followed by 1988's Mississippi Burning (with Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman), and in 1990 by Murder in Mississippi (starring Tom Hulce and Jennifer Grey). In the first two movies, the sympathetic portrayal of FBI agents in the movie angered civil rights activists.
On January 6, 2005, Killen was belatedly arrested on three counts of murder. Harlan Majure, former mayor of Philadelphia, Mississippi, provided an alibi for Killen during the trial, and asserted that the Ku Klux Klan was a "peaceful organization". Killen was convicted on three counts of manslaughter on June 21, 2005, after the jury opted for manslaughter instead of murder.
See also
- Judge William Cox
- James Eastland
- Joseph L. Gormley
- Edgar Ray Killen
External links
- [Federal Bureau of Intimidation by Howard Zinn]
- [James Earl Chaney Foundation]
- [Civil Rights worker's sculpture]
- [New arrest in 1964 civil rights murders] (CNN.com)
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