Freedom Summer: Murder in Mississippi

For one of my other classes this semester, I wrote a paper about three civil rights murders during the Mississippi Freedom Project. These murders gained much attention because it was the first time white volunteers were targeted and killed.

In short, the Mississippi Freedom Project during the summer of 1964 was one answer to voting discrimination during the civil rights movement; volunteers were called to travel to Mississippi and register as many black voters as possible. The leaders of the NAACP and the SNCC also realized that “white Americans would be more sympathetic to the cause of civil rights if whites became involved in the efforts to build democracy across the South.” So they recruited and trained white college students and young adults and sent them into the deepest corners of Mississippi to register African Americans voters.

           

Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were white volunteers from New York, and James Chaney was a black volunteer from Meridian, Mississippi. It was the first official day of Freedom Summer, and the men were traveling to Neshoba County to investigate a church bombing. They were arrested for speeding and released at 10:00 in the evening. On their way out of town, their car was followed, pulled over again, and a group of about 21 men beat and shot them.

In the years following the murder, 18 members of the Mississippi Branch of the Ku Klux Klan, including the sheriff and several of his deputies were arrested for their involvement in the murders. At the original trial, however, only 7 men were charged with “conspiracy to deny civil rights to in the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.” They were Collectively sentenced to 41 years in prison.

 In 2005, the case was re-opened, and James Ray Killen, has been the only man indicted of murder and convicted of manslaughter. Although he was credited with being the ringleader of the mob, the jury said, “the evidence fell short of what they needed to convict Mr. Killen, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, of murder.” After the trial, the relatives of one of the questioned the racial atmosphere in the state of Mississippi when she said, “The fact that members of this jury could have sat through that testimony” without acknowledging the murderous acts of the Klan “indicates that there are still people unfortunately among you who choose to look aside who choose not to see the truth.”

I agree with what she had to say, and it was hard for me to see how little we have progress in the last 50 years. My question for you is: Do you think there will every be a time that the men who committed these crimes, even if they have already passed from old age, will be held accountable for the murders?