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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums55 Years Ago Today; The Murder of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner (Graphic images/language)
Missing persons poster created by the FBI in 1964, shows the photographs of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner.
The murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, also known as the Freedom Summer murders, the Mississippi civil rights workers' murders or the Mississippi Burning murders, involved three activists who were abducted and murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi in June 1964 during the Civil Rights Movement. The victims were James Chaney from Meridian, Mississippi, and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner from New York City. All three were associated with the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) and its member organization the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). They had been working with the Freedom Summer campaign by attempting to register African Americans in Mississippi to vote. This registration effort was a part of contesting over 70 years of laws and practices that supported a systematic policy, begun by several states in 1890, of disenfranchisement of potential black voters.
The three men had traveled from Meridian, Mississippi, to the community of Longdale to talk with congregation members at a church that had been burned. The trio was thereafter arrested following a traffic stop outside Philadelphia, Mississippi for speeding, escorted to the local jail and held for a number of hours. As the three left town in their car, they were followed by law enforcement and others. Before leaving Neshoba County their car was pulled over and all three were abducted, driven to another location, and shot at close range. The three men's bodies were then transported to an earthen dam where they were buried.
The disappearance of the three men was initially investigated as a missing persons case. The civil rights workers' burnt-out car was found near a swamp three days after their disappearance. An extensive search of the area was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), local and state authorities, and four hundred United States Navy sailors. The three men's bodies were only discovered two months later thanks to a tip-off. During the investigation it emerged that members of the local White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County Sheriff's Office and the Philadelphia, Mississippi Police Department were involved in the incident.
The murder of the activists sparked national outrage and an extensive federal investigation, filed as Mississippi Burning (MIBURN), which later became the title of a 1988 film loosely based on the events. After the state government refused to prosecute, in 1967 the United States federal government charged 18 individuals with civil rights violations. Seven were convicted and received relatively minor sentences for their actions. Outrage over the activists' disappearances helped gain passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Forty-one years after the murders took place, one perpetrator, Edgar Ray Killen, was charged by the state of Mississippi for his part in the crimes. In 2005 he was convicted of three counts of manslaughter and was serving a 60 year sentence. On June 20, 2016, federal and state authorities officially closed the case and dispensed with the possibility of further prosecution. Killen died in prison in January 2018.
Registering others to vote
On Memorial Day 1964, Schwerner and Chaney spoke to the congregation at Mount Zion Methodist Church in Longdale, Mississippi about setting up a Freedom School. Schwerner implored the members to register to vote, saying, "you have been slaves too long, we can help you help yourselves". The White Knights learned of Schwerner's voting drive in Neshoba County and soon developed a plot to hinder the work and ultimately destroy their efforts. The White Knights wanted to lure CORE workers to Neshoba County, so they attacked congregation members and torched the church, burning it to the ground.
On June 21, 1964, Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner met at the Meridian COFO headquarters before traveling to Longdale to investigate the destruction of the Mount Zion Church. Schwerner told COFO Meridian to search for them if they were not back by 4 p.m.; he said, "if we're not back by then start trying to locate us."
Arrest
After visiting Longdale, the three civil rights workers decided not to take road 491 to return to Meridian. The narrow country road was unpaved; abandoned buildings littered the roadside. They decided to head west on Highway 16 to Philadelphia, the seat of Neshoba County, then take southbound Highway 19 to Meridian, figuring it would be the faster route. The time was approaching three in the afternoon, and they were to be in Meridian by four.
The CORE station wagon had barely passed the Philadelphia city limits when one of its tires went flat, and Deputy Sheriff Cecil Ray Price turned on his dashboard-mounted red light and followed them. The trio stopped near the Beacon and Main Street fork. With a long radio antenna mounted to his patrol car, Price called for officer Harry Jackson Wiggs and Earl Robert Poe of the Mississippi Highway Patrol. Chaney was arrested for driving 65 mph in a 35 mph zone; Goodman and Schwerner were held for investigation. They were taken to the Neshoba County jail on Myrtle Street, a block from the courthouse.
In the Meridian office, workers became alarmed when the 4 p.m. deadline passed without word from the three activists. By 4:45 p.m., they notified the COFO Jackson office that the trio had not returned from Neshoba County. The CORE workers called area authorities but did not learn anything; the contacted offices said they had not seen the civil rights worker.
Masterminding the conspiracy
Parties to the conspiracy; Top row: Lawrence A. Rainey, Bernard L. Akin, Other "Otha" N. Burkes, Olen L. Burrage, Edgar Ray Killen. Bottom row: Frank J. Herndon, James T. Harris, Oliver R. Warner, Herman Tucker and Samuel H. Bowers
Nine men, including Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence A. Rainey, were later identified as parties to the conspiracy to murder the three workers. Rainey denied he was ever a part of the conspiracy but he was accused of ignoring the offenses committed in Neshoba County. He has been accused of murdering several other black people. At the time of the murders, the 37-year-old Rainey insisted he was visiting his sick wife in a Meridian hospital and was later with family watching Bonanza. As events unfolded, Rainey became emboldened with his newly found popularity in the Philadelphia, Mississippi, community. Known for his tobacco chewing habit, Rainey was photographed and quoted in Life magazine: "Hey, let's have some Red Man", as other members of the conspiracy laughed while waiting for an arraignment to start.
Fifty-year-old Bernard Akin had a mobile home business which he operated out of Meridian; he was a member of the White Knights. Other N. Burkes, who usually went by the nickname of Otha, was a Philadelphia Police officer. The 71-year-old World War I veteran was a 25-year veteran on the city police force; he was reported to have a cruel disposition, especially toward black people. At the time of the December 1964 arraignment, Burkes was awaiting an indictment for a different civil rights case. Olen L. Burrage, who was 34 at the time, owned a trucking company. Burrage's Old Jolly Farm is where the civil rights workers were found buried. Burrage, an honorably discharged U.S. Marine, is quoted as saying: "I got a dam big enough to hold a hundred of them." Several weeks after the murders, Burrage told the FBI: "I want people to know I'm sorry it happened." Edgar Ray Killen, a Baptist preacher and sawmill owner, decades later was convicted of orchestrating the murders.
Frank J. Herndon, 46, operated a Meridian drive-in called the Longhorn; he was the Exalted Grand Cyclops of the Meridian White Knights. James T. Harris, also known as Pete, was a White Knight investigator. The 30-year-old Harris was keeping tabs on the three civil rights workers' every move. Oliver R. Warner, known as Pops, was a Meridian grocery owner. Warner, 54, was a member of the White Knights. Herman Tucker lived in Hope, Mississippi, a few miles from the Neshoba County Fair grounds. Tucker, 36, was not a member of the White Knights, but he was a building contractor who worked for Burrage. The White Knights gave Tucker the assignment of getting rid of the CORE station wagon driven by the workers. White Knights Imperial Wizard Samuel H. Bowers, who served with the U.S. Navy during World War II, was not apprehended on December 4, 1964, but he was implicated the following year. Bowers, then 39, is credited with saying: "This is a war between the Klan and the FBI. And in a war, there have to be some who suffer."
On Sunday, June 7, 1964, nearly 300 White Knights met near Raleigh, Mississippi. Bowers addressed the White Knights about the "nigger-communist invasion of Mississippi" expected to take place in a few weeks, in what CORE announced as Freedom Summer. The men listened as Bowers said: "This summer the enemy will launch his final push for victory in Mississippi", and, "there must be a secondary group of our members, standing back from the main area of conflict, armed and ready to move. It must be an extremely swift, extremely violent, hit-and-run group."
Lynch mob forms
Lynch Mob; Top Row, L-R: Cecil R. Price, Travis M. Barnette, Alton W. Roberts, Jimmy K. Arledge, Jimmy Snowden. Bottom Row, L-R: Jerry M. Sharpe, Billy W. Posey, Jimmy L. Townsend, Horace D. Barnette, James Jordan.
Although federal authorities believed many others took part in the Neshoba County lynching, only ten men were charged with the physical murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. One of these was the county's deputy sheriff, who played a crucial role in implementing the conspiracy. Before his friend Lawrence A. Rainey was elected sheriff in 1963, Cecil R. Price worked as a salesman, bouncer, and fireman. Price had no prior experience in local law enforcement. The 26-year-old Price was the only person who witnessed the entire event. He arrested the three men, released them the night of the murders, and chased them down state highway 19 toward Meridian, eventually re-capturing them at the intersection near House, Mississippi. Price and the other nine men escorted them north along highway 19 to Rock Cut Road, where they forced a stop and murdered the three civil rights workers.
Killen went to Meridian earlier that Sunday to organize and recruit men for the job to be carried out in Neshoba County. Before the men left for Philadelphia, Travis M. Barnette, 36, went to his Meridian home to take care of a sick family member. Barnette owned a Meridian garage and was a member of the White Knights. Alton W. Roberts, 26, was a dishonorably discharged U.S. Marine who worked as a salesman in Meridian. Roberts, standing 6 ft 3 in (1.91 m) and weighing 270 lb (120 kg), was a formidable foe and renowned for his short temper. According to witnesses, Roberts shot both Goodman and Schwerner at point blank range. He also shot Chaney in the head after another accomplice, James Jordan, shot Chaney in the abdomen. Roberts said "Are you that nigger lover?" to Schwerner, and shooting him after the latter responded, "Sir, I know just how you feel." Jimmy K. Arledge, 27, and Jimmy Snowden, 31, were both Meridian commercial drivers. Arledge, a high school drop-out, and Snowden, a U.S. Army veteran, were present during the murders. After the second arrest by Price, Arledge would drive the CORE station wagon from state highway 492 to Rock Cut Road.
Jerry M. Sharpe, Billy W. Posey, and Jimmy L. Townsend were all from Philadelphia. Sharpe, 21, ran a pulp wood supply house. Posey, 28, a Williamsville, Mississippi automobile mechanic, owned a 1958 red and white Chevrolet; the car was considered fast and was chosen over Sharpe's. The youngest was Townsend, 17; he left high school in 1964 to work at Posey's Phillips 66 garage. Horace D. Barnette, 25, was Travis' younger half-brother; he had a 1957 two-toned blue Ford Fairlane sedan. Horace Barnette's car is the one the group took after Posey's car broke down. Officials say that James Jordan, 38, killed Chaney. He confessed his crimes to the federal authorities in exchange for a plea deal.
Pursuit on Highway 19
After Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner's release from the Neshoba County jail around 10 p.m. on June 21, they were followed almost immediately by Deputy Sheriff Price in his 1957 white Chevrolet sedan patrol car. Soon afterward, the civil rights workers left the city limits located along Hospital Road and headed south on state Highway 19. The workers arrived at Pilgrim's store, where they may have been inclined to stop and use the telephone, but the presence of a Mississippi Highway Safety patrol car, manned by Officer Wiggs and Poe, most likely dissuaded them. They continued south toward Meridian.
The lynch mob members, who were in Barnette's and Posey's cars, were drinking while arguing who would kill the three young men. Eventually Philadelphia Police Officer Burkes drove up to Horace D. Barnette's car and told the group: "They're going on 19 toward Meridian. Follow them!" After a quick rendezvous with Philadelphia police officer Richard Willis, Price was in pursuit of the three civil rights workers.
Posey's Chevrolet carried Roberts, Sharpe, and Townsend. The Chevy apparently had carburetor problems and was forced to the side of the highway. Sharpe and Townsend were ordered to stay with Posey's car and service it. Roberts transferred to Barnette's car, joining Arledge, Jordan, Posey, and Snowden.
Price eventually caught the CORE station wagon heading west toward Union, Mississippi, on state highway 492. Soon he stopped them and escorted the three civil right workers north on Highway 19, back in the direction of Philadelphia. The caravan turned west on County Road 515 (also known as Rock Cut Road), and stopped at the secluded intersection of County Road 515 and County Road 284 (32°39?40.45?N 89°2?4.13?W). They were shot by Jordan and Roberts. Chaney was also beaten before his death.
Disposing of the evidence
The station wagon on an abandoned logging road along Highway 21
After the three men were shot, they were quickly loaded into their Ford station wagon and transported to Burrage's Old Jolly Farm, located along Highway 21, a few miles southwest of Philadelphia where an earthen dam for a farm pond was under construction. Herman Tucker, a heavy machinery operator, was at the dam waiting for the lynch mob's arrival. Earlier in the day, Burrage, Posey, and Tucker had met at Posey's gasoline station or Burrage's garage to discuss these burial details, and Tucker most likely was the one who covered up the bodies using a bulldozer that he owned. An autopsy of Andrew Goodman, showing fragments of red clay in his lungs and grasped in his fists, suggests he was probably buried alive alongside the already dead Chaney and Schwerner.
After all three were buried, Price told the group:
Well, boys, you've done a good job. You've struck a blow for the white man. Mississippi can be proud of you. You've let those agitating outsiders know where this state stands. Go home now and forget it. But before you go, I'm looking each one of you in the eye and telling you this: The first man who talks is dead! If anybody who knows anything about this ever opens his mouth to any outsider about it, then the rest of us are going to kill him just as dead as we killed those three sonofbitches [sic] tonight. Does everybody understand what I'm saying. The man who talks is dead, dead, dead!
Eventually, Tucker was tasked with disposing of the CORE station wagon in Alabama. For reasons unknown, the station wagon was left near a river in northeast Neshoba County along Highway 21. It was soon set ablaze and abandoned.
Investigation and public attention
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the 1964 Civil Rights Act as Martin Luther King, Jr. and others look on, July 2, 1964.
Protest outside the 1964 Democratic National Convention; some hold signs with portraits of slain civil rights workers, 24 August 1964
Sheriff Lawrence A. Rainey being escorted by two FBI agents to the federal courthouse in Meridian, Mississippi; October 1964
Unconvinced by the assurances of the Memphis-based agents, Sullivan elected to wait in Memphis ... for the start of the "invasion" of northern students ... Sullivan's instinctive decision to stick around Memphis proved correct. Early Monday morning, June 22, he was informed of the disappearance ... he was ordered to Meridian. The town would be his home for the next nine months.
?Cagin & Dray, We Are Not Afraid, 1988
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover initially ordered the FBI Office in Meridian, run by John Proctor, to begin a preliminary search after the three men were reported missing. That evening, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy escalated the search and ordered 150 federal agents to be sent from New Orleans. Two local Native Americans found the smoldering car that evening; by the next morning, that information had been communicated to Proctor. Joseph Sullivan of the FBI immediately went to the scene. By the next day, the federal government had arranged for hundreds of sailors from the nearby Naval Air Station Meridian to search the swamps of Bogue Chitto.
J. Edgar Hoover was antipathetic to civil rights groups in general; he had long been worried that they were under communist influence. During the investigation, searchers including Navy divers and FBI agents discovered the bodies of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore in the area (the first was found by a fisherman). They were college students who had disappeared in May 1964. Federal searchers also discovered 14-year-old Herbert Oarsby, and five other unidentified Mississippi blacks, whose disappearances in the recent past had not attracted attention outside their local communities.
The disappearance of the three activists captured national attention. By the end of the first week, all major news networks were covering their disappearances. Johnson met with the parents of Goodman and Schwerner in the Oval Office. Walter Cronkite's CBS newscast broadcast on June 25, 1964, called the disappearances "the focus of the whole country's concern". The FBI eventually offered a $25,000 reward (equivalent to $202,000 in 2018), which led to the breakthrough in the case.
Mississippi officials resented the outside attention. The Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey said, "They're just hiding and trying to cause a lot of bad publicity for this part of the state." The governor of Mississippi, Paul B. Johnson Jr., dismissed concerns, saying the young men "could be in Cuba".
Located remains of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner on August 4, 1964
The bodies of the CORE activists were found only after an informant (discussed in FBI reports only as "Mr. X" ) passed along a tip to federal authorities. They were discovered on August 4, 1964, 44 days after their murder, underneath an earthen dam on Olen Burrage's 254 acres (103 ha; 0.397 sq mi) farm. Schwerner and Goodman had each been shot once in the heart; Chaney, a black man, had been severely beaten, castrated and shot three times.
The identity of "Mr. X" was revealed publicly 40 years after the original events, and revealed to be Maynard King, a Mississippi Highway Patrol officer close to the head of the FBI investigation. King died in 1966.
In a famous eulogy for James Chaney, CORE leader Dave Dennis voiced his rage, anguish, and turmoil:
I blame the people in Washington DC and on down in the state of Mississippi just as much as I blame those who pulled the trigger. ... I'm tired of that! Another thing that makes me even tireder though, that is the fact that we as people here in the state and the country are allowing it to continue to happen. ... Your work is just beginning. If you go back home and sit down and take what these white men in Mississippi are doing to us. ... if you take it and don't do something about it. ... then God damn your souls!
Lyndon B. Johnson and civil rights activists used the outrage over the activists' deaths to gain passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which he signed on July 2. This and the Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965 contributed to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which Johnson signed on August 6 of that year.
Malcolm X used the delayed resolution of the case in his argument that the federal government was not protecting black lives, and African-Americans would have to defend themselves: "And the FBI head, Hoover, admits that they know who did it, they've known ever since it happened, and they've done nothing about it. Civil rights bill down the drain."
By late November 1964 the FBI accused 21 Mississippi men of engineering a conspiracy to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. Most of the suspects were apprehended by the FBI on December 4, 1964. The FBI detained the following individuals: B. Akin, E. Akin, Arledge, T. Barnette, Burkes, Burrage, Bowers, Harris, Herndon, Killen, Posey, Price, Rainey, Roberts, Sharpe, Snowden, Townsend, Tucker, and Warner. Two individuals who were not interviewed and photographed, H. Barnette and James Jordan, would later confess their roles during the murder.
Because Mississippi officials refused to prosecute the killers for murder, a state crime, the federal government, led by prosecutor John Doar, charged 18 individuals under 18 U.S.C. §242 and §371 with conspiring to deprive the three activists of their civil rights (by murder). They indicted Sheriff Rainey, Deputy Sheriff Price and 16 other men. A U. S. Commissioner dismissed the charges six days later, declaring that the confession on which the arrests were based was hearsay. One month later, government attorneys secured indictments against the conspirators from a federal grand jury in Jackson. On February 24, 1965, however, Federal Judge William Harold Cox, an ardent segregationist, threw out the indictments against all conspirators other than Rainey and Price on the ground that the other seventeen were not acting "under color of state law." In March, 1966, the United States Supreme Court overruled Cox and reinstated the indictments. Defense attorneys then made the argument that the original indictments were flawed because the pool of jurors from which the grand jury was drawn contained insufficient numbers of minorities. Rather than attempt to refute the charge, the government summoned a new grand jury and, on February 28, 1967, won reindictments.
</snip>
Rhiannon12866
(202,972 posts)And how much have we progressed since that dark time??
Dennis Donovan
(18,770 posts)Rhiannon12866
(202,972 posts)Thanks to Trump, they now feel emboldened to appear without their hoods!
certainot
(9,090 posts)suppression, put children in cages,
sept 10 2008 limbaugh made up a silly pretext to suggest obama needed to be fired from his campaign, saying "obabma's head needs to roll" .... the trump base of dittoheads heard it but never a peep from obama supporters. a few months ago he did similar so he could use the phrase "take her out" several times referencing AOC - and no response from AOC supporters.
limbaugh called mike brown and trayvon martin thugs for months and made excuses for their killers. along with all his wannabes they polluted the jury pools. like they're doing now with trumps accomplices. then attacking ferguson protestors and black lives matters for months. calling colin kaepernick and kneeling protestors 'traitors' for years.
explaining for years there is no white privilege. that obama proved it.
spending years attacking brown immigrants and creating the voter fraud fraud to sell voter suppression. giving national attention on 1500 radio stations every time an immigrant committed a notable crime, and same on the local level.
attacking muslims to get us into wars with iraq and iran.
now pointing out africans in caravans at the southern border while someone attacks ebola clinics in the congo so we can have another african/ebola scare this election, like RW radio sold in the 2014 elections.
and we let 88 major universities support more than 260 limbaugh stations. they broadcast sports on them and use their african american athletes to help them attract advertisers and community credibility. those schools need to be be protested until they look for apolitical alternatives. they need to be asked if they would continue to use those stations if they were bought by the KKK.
that is the alternate reality buzz that informs the hardcore base and filters through to tens of millions of americans in 40 states with 80 senators who are too busy or apathetic to research the truth, who can't get free easy alternatives for politics while driving or working. setting up this orange asshole in the white house.
and dems/liberals/the 'left' have been ignoring it for 30 years and still do, because it hurts our heads, even considering the substantial circumstantial evidense the kremlin has been using talk radio the last decade.
EndGOPPropaganda
(1,117 posts)I did not know Limbaugh was subsidized.
https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2013/05/09/rush-limbaughs-wingnut-welfare/193995
certainot
(9,090 posts)for the trillions they sell in global warming denial, war, deregulation, and tax breaks, limbaugh is way underpaid and he knows it and would probably jump at ops to supplement his meager income with some laundered bucks
the hannity/manafort texts point out closeness between kremlin and talk radio/fox and why wouldn't the kremlin figure out how to influence rw radio gods.
hannity's name is completely redacted from the mueller report glossary between graff and hawker even though he was mentioned 5 times in it. the name should be there and the description redacted just like everyone else. was that a signal from the mueller redaction team?
media is supposed to notice this shit, not just a twit like me
EndGOPPropaganda
(1,117 posts)After all, the Russian propaganda just mirrored what Fox and Limbaugh were already doing.
Billionaires like the Koches and the Murdochs have more in common with Russian oligarchs than they do with average Americans.
certainot
(9,090 posts)paying for those stations and the other local teams of blowhards, and the universities endorsing those stations and helping attract advertisers that piss me off. all that, at $1000/hr x 15 hrs x 1200 stations is worth about $5BIL/year to them and that's all free.
if limbaugh and hannity are getting freelance money for particular jobs (like when limbaugh created climategate in 2009 from a russian hack and a full week of yammering about it) it needs to get attention and media needs to get excited over it. or when he spent solid weeks attacking christine 'balsey' ford. and did trump or his russian friends pay for his support starting at the republican primaries?
EndGOPPropaganda
(1,117 posts)The Republican Party has been courting racists for votes for 40 years now.
Reagan went to Neshoba County in 1980 to KICK OFF HIS CAMPAIGN and talked about states rights.
Everyone there knew he was pursuing the racist vote.
Rhiannon12866
(202,972 posts)Reagan chose Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of this tragedy, to kick off his campaign which sent a clear message regarding states' rights. And they got the message - in 1976, native son Jimmy Carter carried the South, in 1980, he only won Georgia.
certainot
(9,090 posts)- which continue to excuse racism -
and we let at least 88 major universities endorse them, broadcasting sports on them, using african american athletes to help them sell advertising to pay for that constant racist buzz from limbaugh, savage, levin, etc - used to reverse progress and sell voter suppression legislation, get killer cops off, lie us into wars, and so on
that is fucked up and americans have to stop ignoring those KKK radio stations
sl8
(13,584 posts)Appreciate your history posts.
Related:
"Murder in Mississippi" - Norman Rockwell. Oil on canvas. 1964. Intended as the illustration for the Look magazine article titled, "Southern Justice," by Charles Morgan, Jr. The painting remained unpublished © Norman Rockwell Family Agency. All rights reserved. Norman Rockwell Museum Collection.
On June 21, 1964, three young civil rights activists, a 21 year-old black man from Meridian, Mississippi named James Chaney, and two white Jewish youth from New York, Andrew Goodman (21), and Michael Schwerner (25), were kidnapped and savagely murdered in Neshoba County in Philadelphia, Mississippi. They had been working in the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign to register African-American voters in Mississippi when they met their end at the hands of racist killers. At the time only 6.7% of black Mississippians were registered to vote.
One can imagine the American social realist Ben Shahn creating prints extolling the memory of the murdered civil rights activists, but it is harder to think of Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) doing the same. I always found his works too saccharine for my taste, though I respected his considerable skill as a painter. However, the postmodern art world long ago turned its collective back on Rockwell, regarding him disdainfully as a hopelessly old-fashioned illustrator and purveyor of quaint mythic Americanisms. But Rockwells homage to the heroes Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner - a dark and brooding work - revealed a hidden aspect of U.S. society that not even Rockwell could veil. Since its rise to prominence in the 1970s, postmodernism has not produced a single work of art as profound as Rockwells Murder in Mississippi.
Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were arrested by Neshoba County police officer Cecil Price on a trumped up traffic violation. The three were held in the Neshoba County jail for several hours. During their brief imprisonment, officer Price, who was also a member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, arranged with his fellow Klansmen the evening release and subsequent murder of the young men. Let out of jail at around ten in the evening after paying a fine, the trio attempted to drive out of town. Just as they were about to cross the county line officer Price stopped them once again, this time turning the three over to more than a dozen KKK terrorists. Goodman and Schwerner were each shot once in the heart, Chaney was beaten and shot three times. The men were then secretively buried beneath an earthen dam.
Fellow civil rights activists were naturally alarmed when Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner disappeared, and a manhunt was immediately launched. Hundreds of federal authorities were sent to Mississippi to conduct the search. Racist violence was no stranger to the black community of Mississippi or to Freedom Summer activists, that summer 37 black churches, businesses, and homes were firebombed by white supremacists. When the bodies of the three activists were at last found, the news gripped the nation. It had taken 44 days of searching before the badly decomposed bodies of the young men were located. The tenor of the times was well captured by Nina Simone in her 1964 song, Mississippi Goddam.
[...]
More at link.
erronis
(14,952 posts)have happened if Life had actually printed that issue.
Probably a bit more outrage and then typical apathy.
McKim
(2,412 posts)Thank you for the reminder abpit our precious Maryters/
Ilsa
(61,675 posts)Snip
The viciousness behind the murders was of a magnitude that to utter the words murders of the three civil rights workers, even the names Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney, was sufficient for most people to summon the gruesome details of the trios disappearance and the discovery forty-four days later of their decomposing bodies on the farm of one of the towns wealthier residents. They were of a magnitude, too, that J. Edgar Hoover opened a field office in Jackson, Mississippi, to investigate the murders and two hundred other unsolved cases of racial violenceall suspected to be the work of a new, particularly virulent Klan known as the White Knights of Mississippi.
Snip
The author is a fantastic writer, but this is a long article. It documents how this network of murderers tried to keep others in the community who wanted to do the right thing subjugated and quiet.
hlthe2b
(101,720 posts)Kind of Blue
(8,709 posts)Harker
(13,880 posts)without ever being found.
hedda_foil
(16,368 posts)Truth.
ProudMNDemocrat
(16,485 posts)Last edited Fri Jun 21, 2019, 09:54 AM - Edit history (1)
People are not born to hate. It is taught.
The Spring of 1964, my father was offered an huge promotion to head a division of Lockheed in Marietta, Georgia just months before this event happened. My mother put her foot down and said , "No way are we moving to the segregated South."
We already had 3 strikes against us. 1) Being Liberal. We kids were not being raised to hate people different from us. 2) Being Catholic. 3) My parents had 3 daughters with me as the eldest. My mother also had an inherent fear of the Klu Klux Klan. She had read books of what they were doing to the Blacks in the South and to those sympathetic to the Civil Rights cause. She did not want any harm to come to us. Her Step-Father was a former member of a Klan unit from Kentucky and very racist. I can remember him using the N word up until his death in the late 80's before he died to describe African-Americans.
Thank you for posting this. We must never forget the horrible times of man's inhumanity to mankind in such ways. Now the attention is being drawn towards Muslims, the LGBTQ community, and those seeking asylum. Hate still exists in this country, especially more visibly under Trump.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)lunamagica
(9,967 posts)struggle4progress
(118,039 posts)struggle4progress
(118,039 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)struggle4progress
(118,039 posts)byronius
(7,369 posts)struggle4progress
(118,039 posts)... Activist and folk singer Pete Seeger ... helped spread the song We Shall Overcome to civil rights workers at the Highlander Folk School. In 1964 he came to Jackson, Mississippi, to support the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committees Mississippi Freedom Summer Project. While he was there, three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney went missing. He remembers, I was in singing to about two hundred people in a church when they gave me a piece of paper that said, Theyve found the bodies of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney. And I made this announcement. There was no shouting. There was no anger. I saw lips moving in prayer. And I think I sang this song that Fred Hellerman made up, O healing river, send down your waters. Send down your waters upon this land
Its a beautiful song.
Jamila Jones grew up in Alabama and sang professionally as a teenager with the Montgomery Gospel Trio and the Harambee Singers. In 1958, she came to the Highlander Folk School for nonviolent activist training. As Jones recalls in her interview, Highlander was raided by the police, who shut off all the lights in the building. She found the strength to sing out into the darkness, adding a new verse, We are not afraid, to the song, We Shall Overcome. Jones explains, And we got louder and louder with singing that verse, until one of the policemen came and he said to me, If you have to sing, and he was actually shaking, do you have to sing so loud? And I could not believe it. Here these people had all the guns, the billy clubs, the power, we thought. And he was asking me, with a shake, if I would not sing so loud. And it was that time that I really understood the power of our music.
https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/music-in-the-civil-rights-movement/
struggle4progress
(118,039 posts)AUG. 10, 1964
... an anonymous telephone caller warned .. that a bomb had been placed in the building ... But the service continued without interruption ... The bomb scare proved a hoax ...
... 150 persons in the basement listened .. over a loudspeaker. More than 500 .. waited patiently on the sidewalk outside.
None of these civil rights workerscertainly not Andy or Michael or Jameswould have us in resentment and vindictiveness add to the store of hatred in the world ...
As her son's coffin was borne up the aisle, Mrs. Goodman reached out for the hand of Mrs. Chaney, Mrs. Schwerner joined them and the three mothers walked out of the building with arms linked.
The hundreds who had waited on the sidewalk began quietly singing We Shall Overcome ...
https://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/10/archives/slain-rights-workers-mourned-by-thousands-at-services-here.html
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)Thirties Child
(543 posts)Just reading the headline left me short of breath. Which presidential nominee -- Reagan? -- opened his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi? A message was being sent, at least to those of us old enough to remember.
mahatmakanejeeves
(56,896 posts)Booking photo, late 1964
Criminal status: Deceased
Conviction(s): Manslaughter (3 counts)
Criminal charge: Manslaughter (3 counts)
Penalty: 60 years imprisonment
Edgar Ray Killen (January 17, 1925 January 11, 2018) was a Ku Klux Klan organizer who planned and directed the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, three civil rights activists participating in the Freedom Summer of 1964.[1][2] He was found guilty in state court of three counts of manslaughter on June 21, 2005, the forty-first anniversary of the crime, and sentenced to 60 years in prison. He appealed the verdict, but the sentence was upheld on April 12, 2007, by the Supreme Court of Mississippi. He died in prison on January 11, 2018, six days before his 93rd birthday.
Dennis Donovan
(18,770 posts)The_jackalope
(1,660 posts)I lived in Canada, but the university in my city hosted a talk by a SNCC representative. He told us about what was going on down south, the mobs with baseball bats at the bus stations to greet the Freedom Riders, the fire hoses and the dogs. This was the first (but not the last) time I heard the name of Bull Connor. So I was very sensitized to the situation when these murders happened a few weeks later. When I picked up the guitar, one of the first songs I learned was Tom Paxton's "Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney".