“The slaying of a Negro in Mississippi is not news…” The Mississippi Burning Murders at 59. The past is never truly past

The destroyed Mount Zion Church in Philadelphia, Mississippi

Almost fifty-nine years ago three young men working to register blacks to vote as part of the Freedom Summer in Mississippi were brutally murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

I am very much concerned that we are sliding back into such a day. In many states the voting rights of Blacks are being rolled back, a Jim Crow era laws limiting voting was upheld by the 5th Circuit Court, and violence against Blacks, including that committed by law enforcement officers continues to rise, and more concerning White Nationalist, Neo-Nazi, and the Ku Klux Klan openly march, threaten, and harass African Americans as well as other minorities and LGBTQ+ citizens. Since all of these are happening under the backdrop of former President Trump threatening to violate the 14th Amendment, as well as encouraging violence against vulnerable people, we have reason to be concerned. I understand because of my volunteer work with a civil rights organization I often receive threats of physical violence from such people, but I digress.

On June 21st 1964, the three men, Andrew Goodman, James Cheney, and Mickey Schwerner, were in Philadelphia Mississippi where they were investigating the burning of the Mount Zion Methodist Church, which had been working with CORE to register Black voters in the town. In the wake of that many black citizens and church members were beaten by whites, and they accused Sheriff’s Deputy Cecil Price of abuse.

The three were arrested for an alleged traffic violation, jailed and released that evening without being allowed to make any phone calls. On the way back to Meridian, two carloads of Klan members forced them over, abducted them and killed them. They then used a bulldozer to bury the men’s bodies in an earthen dam. Their bodies would not be discovered for 44 days.

State and local law enforcement refused to pursue the case citing a lack of evidence. The FBI began an investigation under the Lindbergh law of 1932 that ultimately involved over 200 agents. On June 23rd the CORE station wagon that them men were using was discovered, it was still smoking from an attempt to cover up evidence of the crime.

The CORE station wagon

The FBI combed the woods and swamps of the area finding eight bodies in July. They included college students Henry Dee and Charles Moore, who had been missing since May and a body clothed with a CORE t-shirt. A tip from an informer, a Mississippi State trooper named Maynard King sent the FBI to an earthen dam on the Old Jolly farm near Philadelphia, where the bodies were found on August 4th.

The bodies of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner

The investigation continued throughout the fall and on December 4th 1964, unable to charge murder as that was a State crime, the Justice department field civil rights violation charges against 21 men. A Federal Grand Jury indicted 18 people including Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Rainy, in January, but Federal judge William Harold Cox dismissed charges against all but three, claiming the law only applied to law enforcement, Deputy Price, and others. The prosecution appealed and the Supreme Court ruled that the law was not limited to law enforcement, and in January 1967 another Federal Grand Jury indicted the men once again and the trial returned to Judge Cox’s court.

Cox was a noted segregationist who had used disparaging language towards Blacks in court, however, when a defense attorney tried to say that Schwerer had attempted to rape a white woman in 1964, the judge put his foot down and sent a message that white men would not get a pass in his courtroom. Seven men were convicted and three others, and the jury did not return verdicts on three, including Ray Killen, a Baptist minister and local KKK leader, and Sheriff Rainy. The seven convicted included Deputy Price and Samuel Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of Mississippi’s White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Bowers later told a reporter that he was happy to be convicted when the real guilty party, Killen, walked away a free man. Those convicted received sentences of three to ten years, but none served over six years. Rainy, whose term in office ended in 1967 was never employed in law enforcement again, claim to be a victim of the FBI.

The comments led to Mississippi’s Attorney General reopening the case in 1999. A grand jury indicted Ray Killen on murder charges in 2005. Killen was convicted of Manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in prison. No one else was charged.

The great American artist, Norman Rockwell, well known for his portraits of American life and the Civil Rights movement painted “Southern Justice” which is sometimes known as “Murder in Mississippi” in 1965. It was his depiction of their murders at the hands of the Klan and law enforcement.

Rockwell painted his masterpiece not long after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1964, which has been under attack in many southern states over the past decade and had a key provision regarding its enforcement gutted by the Supreme Court in 2015.

Gene Hackman and William Dafoe in Mississippi Burning

The murders of these three young men brought national attention to the pervasive racism and discrimination in the country. So many murders, lynchings, and the burnings of homes businesses and that went before were covered up by the media. Schwerner’s wife Rita, also a member of CORE said “The slaying of a Negro in Mississippi is not news. It is only because my husband and Andrew Goodman are white that the national alarm has sounded.”

I do hope and pray that we never go back to those days, but as laws are passed to limit voting rights in various states I wonder if the clock will be turned back.

But, we the living cannot allow the sacrifice of so many people who often paid with their blood for progress, to allow those rights to be destroyed, even in the short term.

This is dedicated to memory of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner and others of the Freedom Summer and the Civil Rights movement who died or suffered to peacefully bring about change to our society.

---