The meeting—“Recognition, Resolution, Redemption: Uniting for Justice”—was called by the Philadelphia Coalition, a group of 30 people in the town who are calling to have the murders reinvestigated.

Those present at the meeting included veterans of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer campaign, former members of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), residents of Neshoba County, high school and college students, and many others.

Speakers at the program included Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, Philadelphia mayor Rayburn Waddell, Leroy Clemons, president of the Neshoba County NAACP, and Jim Prince, editor of the Neshoba Democrat. On stage and in the audience were members of the Chaney and Goodman families.

A resolution adopted by the coalition reads, “We state candidly and with deep regret that some of our own citizens, including local and state law enforcement officers, were involved in the planning and execution of these murders. We are also cognizant of the shameful involvement and interference of state government, including actions of the state Sovereignty Commission, in thwarting justice in this case.”

A resolution passed at the end of May by Philadelphia’s local government noted with regret “that history will record that the authorities did not make a good faith effort” to ensure that justice was done in 1964.

In early June Mississippi attorney general James Hood announced that he is personally interviewing potential witnesses in the 1964 murder. Hood has asked the U.S. Justice Department to also get involved in the reinvestigation.

“There are some out there who I believe have information that they’ve yet to reveal,” he said. Among the evidence under review are informant files compiled by the FBI in 1964, which were not made available to state prosecutors at the time of the murders.

The three civil rights workers were murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, on June 21 of that year. Along with other young fighters for Black rights, they had volunteered for the “Freedom Summer” voter registration drive in this state.

In mid-June, Chaney and Schwerner traveled from Mississippi to Oxford, Ohio, to participate in a Freedom Summer training session. On June 16 Klansman assaulted members of the Mt. Zion church, looking for Chaney and Schwerner. Later that evening they burned the church to the ground.

Informed of the attack, Chaney and Schwerner, joined by the new volunteer Goodman, immediately drove south to investigate and offer solace to the church members.

On June 21, the three young activists drove to Philadelphia from Meridian and visited members of the Mt. Zion congregation. On the way back through town they were pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy, who charged Chaney with speeding and held Schwerner and Goodman on suspicion of burning the Mt. Zion church.

Later that night the three were beaten and shot. Their bodies were found 44 days later in an earthen dam.

Seven members of the Ku Klux Klan were convicted of federal civil rights violations in the deaths and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to 10 years. The state never brought murder charges, and none of those convicted served more than six years.

The move to reopen this case comes shortly after the Justice Department announced that it was also reinvestigating the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black youth beaten to death by racists in the Mississippi Delta.

Ellie J. Dahmer from Hattiesburg came to the meeting because she was “very much concerned that the investigation be reopened.” Her husband, Vernon Dahmer, who had been president of the NAACP in Forest County, Mississippi, was killed when the Ku Klux Klan firebombed his house in 1966. His killer was not convicted until 1998.

Patsy McWilliams, 50, a librarian who has lived in Philadelphia all her life, recalled learning of the murders as a little girl. “Among the Black people,” she said, “everyone was very quiet, very still. No one would talk about what happened. Things have changed now, but we still have a long way to go. The Klan is not as active as they used to be, but they haven’t totally disappeared either.”  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home