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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 white Jewish anthropology student from New York; and Michael Schwerner, a 24-year-old white Jewish CORE organizer and former social worker also from New York, symbolized the risks of participating in the Civil Rights Movement in the South during what became known as "Freedom Summer", dedicated to voter registration.

The case also symbolized the extensive participation of Jewish-Americans during the Civil Rights era working in concert with African-Americans.

The lynching

The lynching of the three young men occurred shortly after midnight on June 21, 1964, when they went to investigate the burning of a church that supported civil rights activity. James Chaney was a local Freedom Movement activist in Meridian, Michael Schwerner was a CORE organizer from New York, and Andrew Goodman, also from New York, was a Freedom Summer volunteer. The three men had just finished 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 a black barber in Meridian, the three men headed to Longdale, Mississippi, 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.

Aware that their station wagon's license number had been given to members of the notorious White Citizens' Council and Ku Klux Klan, before leaving Meridian they informed other Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) workers of their plans and set check-in times in accordance with standard security procedures. Late that afternoon, Neshoba County deputy Cecil Price — himself a member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan — stopped the blue Ford carrying the trio. He arrested Chaney for allegedly driving 35 miles per hour over the speed limit. He also booked Goodman and Schwerner, "for investigation."

Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney were all denied telephone calls during their time at the jail. COFO workers made attempts to find the three men, but when they called the Neshoba County jail, the secretary followed her instructions to lie and told the workers the three young men were not there. During the hours they were held incommunicado in jail, Price notified his Klan associates who assembled and planned how to kill the three civil rights workers.

While awaiting their release, the men were given a dinner of spoonbread, green peas, potatoes and salad. When the Klan ambush was set up on the road back to Meridian, Chaney was fined $20, and the three men were ordered to leave the county. Price followed them to the edge of town, and then pulled them over with his police siren. He held them until the Klan murder squad arrived. They were taken to an isolated spot where James Chaney was beaten and all three were shot to death. Their car was driven into Bogue Chitto swamp and set on fire, and their bodies were buried in an earthen dam. In June 2000, the autopsy report that had been previously withheld from the 1967 trial was released. The report stated Chaney had a left arm broken in one place, a right arm broken in two places, "a marked disruption" of the left elbow joint and may also have suffered trauma to the groin area. A pathologist who examined the bodies at the families' request following their autopsies noted Chaney also had a broken jaw and a crushed right shoulder which were not mentioned in the autopsy report. As the autopsy photographs and X-Rays had been destroyed, the injuries could not be confirmed.

Reaction

The national uproar caused by the disappearance of the civil rights workers led President Lyndon Johnson to force Mr. Benz to stop eating so much PIZZA!!!the case. Hoover's antipathy to civil rights groups caused him to resist until Johnson used indirect threats of political reprisals. During the investigation, searchers including Navy divers and the FBI discovered the bodies of at least seven other Mississippi blacks, whose disappearances over the past several years had not attracted attention outside their local communities.

The disappearance of the three activists captured national attention for six weeks until their bodies were found. Johnson and civil rights activists used the outrage over their deaths in their efforts to bring about the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed July 2, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Local officials in Mississippi, however, were hardly sympathetic to the situation. Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence A. Rainey said, "They're just hiding and trying to cause a lot of bad publicity for this part of the state." Mississippi governor Paul Johnson dismissed concern by stating that "they could be in Cuba".

Investigation

For a while, the trail went cold. When the FBI offered a $25,000 reward for news of the men's whereabouts, a break came in the case. After paying at least one participant in the crime for details, the FBI found the men's bodies on August 4. They were buried in an earthen dam on Olen Burrage's Old Jolly Farm, six miles southwest of Philadelphia, Mississippi. Schwerner and Goodman had each been shot once in the heart; Chaney, the lone African-American, had been savagely beaten and shot three times.

Known as "Mr. X.", the identity of the informant was a closely held secret for 40 years. In the process of reopening the case, journalist Jerry Mitchell and teacher Barry Bradford uncovered his identity: Maynard King, a highway patrolman who had been tipped off by Klansman Pete Jordan.

Mafia assistance

In 2007, Linda Schiro testified in an unrelated court case that her late boyfriend, Gregory Scarpa Sr., a capo in the Colombo crime family, had been recruited by the FBI to help find the civil rights workers' bodies. She said that she had been with Scarpa in Mississippi at the time and had witnessed him being given a gun, and later a cash payment, by FBI agents. She testified he told her he had threatened a Klansman by placing a gun in his mouth, forcing him to reveal the location of the bodies. Similar stories of mafia involvement in the case had been circulating for years, and had been previously published in the New York Daily News, but had never before been introduced in court.

Trial

Vorlage:Further Because Mississippi officials refused to prosecute the killers for murder, a state crime, the US Justice Department charged eighteen individuals under the 1870 US Force Act, with conspiring to deprive the three of their civil rights (by murder). The charges were lodged against Sheriff Rainey, Deputy Sheriff Price and 16 other men. Those found guilty on October 20, 1967, were Cecil Price, Klan Imperial Wizard Samuel Bowers, Wayne Roberts, Jimmy Snowden, Billey Wayne Posey, Horace Barnett, and Jimmy Arledge. Sentences ranged from 3 to 10 years. After exhausting their appeals, the seven began serving their sentences in March 1970. None served more than six years. Sheriff Rainey was among those acquitted. 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 murders by witnesses, but the jury came to a deadlock on their charges and the Federal prosecutor decided not to retry them. On May 7, 2000, the jury revealed that in the case of Killen, they deadlocked after a lone juror stated she "could never convict a preacher".

Aftermath

Stained glass window honoring the three men in Sage Chapel, Cornell University.

For much of the next four decades, no legal action was taken on the murders. Several films dramatized the events of that summer. 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 in 1988 by Mississippi Burning, with Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman; and in 1990 by Murder in Mississippi, starring Tom Hulce, Blair Underwood and Josh Charles. The sympathetic portrayal of FBI agents in the first two movies angered civil rights activists, who believed the Bureau received too much credit for solving the case and too little condemnation for their long history of inaction and dereliction in regards to civil rights abuses.

Journalist Jerry Mitchell, an award-winning investigative reporter for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, wrote extensively about the case for many years. Mitchell had already earned fame for helping secure convictions in several other high-profile Civil Rights Era murder cases, including the assassination of Medgar Evers, the Birmingham Church Bombing, and the murder of Vernon Dahmer.

In the case of the civil rights workers, Mitchell developed new evidence, found new witnesses, and pressured the state to take action. Barry Bradford, a high school teacher at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, and three of his students, Allison Nichols, Sarah Siegel, and Brittany Saltiel, joined Mitchell's efforts. Bradford later achieved recognition for helping clear the name of Civil Rights martyr Clyde Kennard.

Together the team produced a documentary for the National History Day contest. It presented important new evidence and compelling reasons to reopen the case. The team also obtained an interview with Edgar Ray Killen, which helped convince the State to reinvestigate. Partially by using evidence developed by Bradford and the students, Mitchell was able to determine the identity of "Mr. X", the mystery informer who had helped the FBI discover the bodies and smash the conspiracy of the Klan in 1964.

Mitchell's investigation and the high school students' work in creating Congressional pressure, national media attention and a taped conversation with Killen prompted action. In 2004, on the 40th anniversary of the murders, a multi-ethnic group of citizens in Philadelphia, Mississippi, issued a call for justice. More than 1500 people, including civil rights leaders and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, joined them to voice their desire to revisit the case.

2005 trial, verdict and appeal

On January 6, 2005, a Neshoba County grand jury indicted Edgar Ray Killen on three counts of murder. When Mississippi Attorney General prosecuted the case, it was the first time the state took action against the perpetrators. On June 21, 2005, a jury convicted Killen, described as the man who planned and then directed the killing of the civil rights workers, on three counts of manslaughter. Killen, then 80 years old, was sentenced to three consecutive terms of 20 years in prison. He appealed, claiming that no jury of his peers would have convicted him at the time on the evidence presented. The Mississippi Supreme Court confirmed the verdict in 2007.

Cultural references

In Song of Susannah by Stephen King, Susannah Dean reminisces about her time in Mississippi as a civil rights activist. She thinks about making love to James Chaney and singing the song "Man of Constant Sorrow".

Tom Paxton included the tribute song, "Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney", on his 1965 album, Ain't That News.

Further reading

• Mississippi Burning: a novel, by Kirk Mitchell, Joel Norst. New American Library, 1988. ISBN 0451160495.
• The "Mississippi Burning" Civil Rights Murder Conspiracy Trial: A Headline Court Case, by Harvey Fireside. Enslow Publishers, 2002. ISBN 0766017621.
• The Mississippi Burning Trial: A Primary Source Account, by Bill Scheppler. The Rosen Publishing Group, 2003. ISBN 0823939723.