James Chaney was from Meridian, Mississippi. Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were from New York City. They worked with Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) during Freedom Summer in Mississippi in 1964. They spoke at Mt. Zion Methodist Church in Longdale on Memorial Day weekend 1964, about creating a Freedom School to prepare African Americans to pass comprehension and literacy tests to be able to register to vote. Pause: African Americans were systematically restricted from appropriate education then had to pass tests to be able to register to vote, tests that could be changed at will by White clerks and officials. In 1964; for context the Beatles are on Ed Sullivan the same year. Anyway, the KKK and the police heard about that and burned the church down on June 16, 1964 & beat up members, knowing the three CORE workers would come back. On June 21, 1964, the three men came back to Longdale. Some authors state that Schwerner told his other colleagues that if they weren’t back by 4pm to start looking for them. The three were arrested outside of town for “speeding” and held but released at night. They were followed, ambushed, and killed by local KKK members with the help of local police. Their bodies were found 44 days later. 41 years after their death in 2005, Edgar Ray Killen was sentenced to 60 years in prison for three manslaughter charges. In 2016 the case was closed for good; we don’t know exactly how many people were involved, it was at least 9. In 2018, Killen died in prison. Why this post? These men died because they advocated for African Americans to be able to vote. And did it knowing they could die doing the work. This became a national case, largely because two White men from NYC were killed; African Americans had been dying from White racism in the South for hundreds of years by this point and well, it wasn’t really a nationally influential story most of the time. During the search, 8 bodies of African American men were found in swamps and rivers. Voting is a way for me to pay respect to them and honor their courage. #vote #freedomsummer #chaneyschwernergoodman #neshobacounty #mississippicivilrights (at Neshoba, Mississippi) https://www.instagram.com/p/Boyg1x1BG09/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1w3rbem0cpk1i
