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.

"Missing": Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner (FBI poster)

The murders of James Chaney, a 21-year-old black man from Meridian, Mississippi, Andrew Goodman, a 20-year-old Jewish anthropology student from New York, and Michael Schwerner, a 24-year-old Jewish social worker also from New York, helped symbolize the dangers of the civil rights movement as part of what became known as "Freedom Summer."

1 The case
- 1.1 Disappearance
- 1.2 Trial
2 Aftermath
3 Popular Culture
4 References
5 External links

[edit] The case

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 training on the campus of Western College for Women, now part of Miami University, 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 United Methodist Church. The church, a meeting place for civil rights groups, 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 Citizens 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 per hour 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.

[edit] Disappearance

Police found the charred remains of the station wagon, with three of the hubcaps having been removed. They also realized that the site was in the opposite direction of what Price had told investigators.

Some 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."

Then on the 4th of August(1964) the men's bodies were found on Olen Burrage's Old Jolly Farm, six miles southwest 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.

[edit] Trial

Eighteen male suspects were put on trial in 1967 for civil rights violations only, with just 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.

[edit] Aftermath

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, Blair Underwood and Josh Charles). In the first two movies, the sympathetic portrayal of FBI agents in the movie angered civil rights activists.

On the 40th anniversary of the murders, a multi-ethnic group of citizens in Philadelphia, Mississippi, issued a call for justice. ^[1]. The Philadelphia Coalition issued the call for justice calling on authorities to do the right thing. Civil rights leaders and Mississippi Gov. Haley R. Barbour were in Philadelphia to endorse the call for justice ^[2].

On January 6, 2005, Killen was indicted by a Neshoba County grand jury on three counts of murder. On June 21, 2005, Killen was convicted on three counts of manslaughter ^[3].

A former Philadelphia mayor served as a character witness in the trial ^[4].

[edit] Popular Culture

Drawing of the Three: The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King. The three murders were the reason Odetta Holmes/Detta Walker (later Susannah Dean) was in the town of Oxford, Mississippi for a protest, where she was arrested and humiliated by the fictional white deputies. Mention of this experience occurs often throughout the series.