Mississippi Burning – The Murder of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner
By
John C Abercrombie
Today is day 22 of the 28 day series on Racial Massacres and Riots. As unpleasant as it may be, it is necessary to see the truth. There are many people who honestly have no idea of the struggles that Blacks face on daily basis. Rather than spend time blaiming people and pointing fingers, it is time to face reality and work to solve the festering problem that we all face. Today we look at the killing of three civil rights workers and the efforts to kill them and hide it although our history books do a great job at that.
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The name “Mississippi Burning” is the name of a movie and book that details the murder of three gentlemen who were fighting for the civil rights of all people. There was a concerted movement to register Blacks to vote. People who were denied the full rights of American citizens. There were laws and outward practices that contributed to this completely unAmerican belief system.
In honor of these brave gentlemen, we will give them credit for them and their noble cause.
- Chaney, James
- Goodman, Andrew
- Schwerner, Michael (Mickey)
These men were abducted and murdered in the city of Philadelphia, Mississippi
These men were from different places, Chaney from Meridian, Mississippi, Goodman and Schwerner from New York City, their association was through the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), specifically the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
These gentlemen were working to register Blacks to vote. Since 1890 and through the turn of the century Southern states (Other states were not as blatant) to systematically disenfranchise most Black voters by discrimination in voter registration and voting.
On Memorial Day, May 25, 1964, Schwerner and Chaney spoke to the Congregation of the Mount Zion Methodist Church about setting up a Freedom School. Schwerner implored the members to register to vote and is quoted saying, “you have been slaves too long, we can help you help yourselves”. The White Knights learned of Schwerner’s voting drive in Neshoba County and soon developed a plot to hinder the work and ultimately destroy their efforts. They wanted to lure CORE workers into Neshoba County, so they attacked congregation members and torched the church, burning it to the ground.
The three gentlemen were traveling from Meridian, Mississippi to a Black community known as Longdale to talk with the congregation whose church had been burned to the ground. Whites were suspected because of previous incidents and because the church had been the place were allowed organizations to use their facilities for this noble work.
The three were arrested following a traffic stop for allegedly speeding, escorted to the local jail and held for hours. We begin to see the exercise of power that does not exist, such as arresting passengers for being in a speeding car.
After finally being released they were stopped again by police. They were abducted and driven to another location and shot to death at close range. Their bodies were taken to an earthen dam and were buried 14 feet deep to conceal their bodies “forever”.
They had arranged to call their office by a specified time with instructions to notify authorities if they did arrive by the specified time. The report was initially investigated by law enforcement as a missing persons case, which was a rouse to conceal any law enforcement presence or involvement.
The car the three gentlemen were in was found three days after their disappearance near a swamp. The car had been set afire. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) along with local and state law enforcement who were most likely complicit.
It was not until seven weeks later that the bodies were discovered, and this is due to a tip. It has been discovered that members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County Sheriff’s Office, and the Philadelphia Police Department were involved in the incident.
The involvement of law enforcement may be quite alarming to those unfamiliar with life as a Black person living in the South, but unfortunately it is not rare.
At this time, what is unusual is that the incident received national attention and extensive federal investigation as depicted in the 1988 movie “Mississippi Burning”.
In 1967, after the state government refused to prosecute, the United States federal government charged eighteen individuals with civil rights violations. Seven were convicted and received relatively minor sentences for their actions. Outrage over the activists’ disappearances helped gain passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.The trio were shot and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan because Chaney was Black and Goodman and Schwerner were both Jewish. Forty-one years after the murders took place, one perpetrator, Edgar Ray Killen, was charged by the state of Mississippi for his part in the crimes. In 2005 he was convicted of three counts of manslaughter and was given a 60-year sentence. On June 20, 2016, federal and state authorities officially closed the case, ending the possibility of further prosecution. Killen died in prison in January 2018.
Nine men, including Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence A Rainey were charged with conspiracy to murder.
As events unfolded, Rainey became emboldened with his newly found popularity in the Philadelphia community. Known for his tobacco chewing habit, Rainey was photographed and quoted in Life magazine: “Hey, let’s have some Red Man” (Red Man was a brand of chewing tobacco), as other members of the conspiracy laughed while waiting for an arraignment to start.
Those charged include:
- Fifty-year-old Bernard Akin had a mobile home business which he operated out of Meridian; he was a member of the White Knights
- Seventy-one-year-old Other N. Burkes, who usually went by the nickname of Otha, was a 25-year veteran of the Philadelphia Police
- At the time of the December 1964 arraignment, Burkes was awaiting an indictment for a different civil right case
- Olen L. Burrage, who was 34 at the time, owned a trucking company. Burrage was developing a cattle farm which he called the Old Jolly Farm, where the three civil rights workers were found buried.
- Olen L. Burrage, who was 34 at the time, owned a trucking company
- Burrage was developing a cattle farm which he called the Old Jolly Farm, where the three civil rights workers were found buried
- Burrage, a former U.S. Marine who was honorably discharged, was quoted as saying: “I got a dam big enough to hold a hundred of them
- Frank J. Herndon, 46, operated a Meridian drive-in called the Longhorn
- he was the Exalted Grand Cyclops of the Meridian White Knights
- James T. Harris, also known as Pete, was a White Knights investigator
- The 30-year-old Harris was keeping tabs on the three civil rights workers’ every move
- Oliver R. Warner, 54, known as Pops, was a Meridian grocery owner and member of the White Knights
- Herman Tucker lived in Hope, Mississippi, a few miles from the Neshoba County Fair grounds
- Tucker, 36, was not a member of the White Knights; he was a building contractor who worked for Burrage
- The White Knights gave Tucker the assignment of getting rid of the CORE station wagon driven by the workers
- White Knights Imperial Wizard Samuel H. Bowers, who served with the U.S. Navy during World War II
- Bowers was not apprehended on December 4, 1964, but he was implicated the following year
- Bowers, then 39, was credited with saying: “This is a war between the Klan and the FBI. And in a war, there have to be some who suffer
Several weeks after the murders, Burrage told the FBI: “I want people to know I’m sorry it happened.”
Edgar Ray Killen, a 39-year-old Baptist preacher and sawmill owner, was convicted decades later of orchestrating the murders.
On Sunday, June 7, 1964, nearly 300 White Knights met near Raleigh, Mississippi. Bowers addressed the White Knights about what he described as a “nigger-communist invasion of Mississippi” that he expected to take place in a few weeks, in what CORE had announced as Freedom Summer. The men listened as Bowers said: “This summer the enemy will launch his final push for victory in Mississippi”, and, “there must be a secondary group of our members, standing back from the main area of conflict, armed and ready to move. It must be an extremely swift, extremely violent, hit-and-run group.”
Although federal authorities believed many others took part in the Neshoba County lynching, only ten men were charged with the physical murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. One of these was Deputy Sheriff Price, 26, who played a crucial role in implementing the conspiracy. Before his friend Rainey was elected sheriff in 1963, Price worked as a salesman, fireman, and bouncer. Price, who had no prior experience in local law enforcement, was the only person who witnessed the entire event. He arrested the three men, released them the night of the murders, and chased them down state Highway 19 toward Meridian, eventually re-capturing them at the intersection near House, Mississippi. Price and the other nine men escorted them north along Highway 19 to Rock Cut Road, where they forced a stop and murdered the three civil rights workers.
Killen went to Meridian earlier that Sunday to organize and recruit men for the job to be carried out in Neshoba County. Before the men left for Philadelphia, Travis M. Barnette, 36, went to his Meridian home to take care of a sick family member. Barnette owned a Meridian garage and was a member of the White Knights. Alton W. Roberts, 26, was a dishonorably discharged U.S. Marine who worked as a salesman in Meridian. Roberts, standing 6 ft 3 in and weighing 270 lb., was physically formidable and renowned for his short temper. According to witnesses, Roberts shot both Goodman and Schwerner at point blank range, then shot Chaney in the head after another accomplice, James Jordan, shot him in the abdomen. Roberts asked, “Are you that nigger lover?” to Schwerner, and shot him after the latter responded, “Sir, I know just how you feel.” Jimmy K. Arledge, 27, and Jimmy Snowden, 31, were both Meridian commercial drivers. Arledge, a high school drop-out, and Snowden, a U.S. Army veteran, were present during the murders.
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Jerry M. Sharpe, Billy W. Posey, and Jimmy L. Townsend were all from Philadelphia. Sharpe, 21, ran a pulp wood supply house. Posey, 28, a Williamsville automobile mechanic, owned a 1958 red and white Chevrolet; the car was considered fast and was chosen over Sharpe’s. The youngest was Townsend, 17; he left high school in 1964 to work at Posey’s Phillips 66 garage. Horace D. Barnette, 25, was Travis’ younger half-brother; he had a 1957 two-toned blue Ford Fairlane sedan.[19] Horace’s car is the one the group took after Posey’s car broke down. Officials say that James Jordan, 38, killed Chaney. He confessed his crimes to the federal authorities in exchange for a plea deal.
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Mississippi Burning
The 1964 Murders of the Civil Rights Workers: An FBI Investigation | Real Stories
The FBI investigates the nationally known case of the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia Mississippi amid the tension of the civil rights movement.
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Book
The Mississippi Burning Case: The History and Legacy of the Freedom Summer Murders at the Height of the Civil Rights
“You see, I know what’s gonna happen! I feel it deep in my heart! When they find the people who killed these guys in Neshoba County, you’ve got to come back to the state of Mississippi and have a jury of their cousins, their aunts and their uncles. And I know what they’re going to say – not guilty.” (Dave Dennis, leader of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE))
When famous political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville toured the new United States of America, he was impressed by the representative government set up by the Founders. At the same time, he ominously predicted, “If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise thereto.” De Tocqueville was prescient, because the longest battle fought in the history of the United States has been the Civil Rights Movement.
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Large Screen Television
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Mississippi Burning – Murders
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Book
Mississippi Burning
Three young civil rights workers – two whites and a black – were missing. A pair of F.B.I. agents came to find out what happened to them. One agent played by the rules. The other made his own. But it wasn’t going to be easy for the law to beat the odds in a seething Southern town where old ways died hard and hate killed savagely…
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Mississippi History Tour of Freedom Summer Murder Sites in Mississippi : Mississippi Burning(ep54)
A look into the events that took place during Freedom Summer in Mississippi during 1964
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Book
The Hero of Mississippi Burning
1964 was the height of the Civil Rights and Wrongs Movement, and America was in turmoil. I was eight years old and visiting the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi for a family reunion. This story is about something I have remembered from that time, when I met two men on a creek bank in Neshoba County, Mississippi on August 6, 1964. I have always remembered what they said out loud in front of me. The one with the hat said, “Judge, go up there and find out who’s muddying up the water,” and the tall slender man said, “You’re the Lawman-you go up there and find out who’s muddying up the water.” I’ve always wondered why I met two men that were a judge and a lawman. Meanwhile, 50 years later while doing research on the Internet, I discovered information pertaining to the identity of the middle man between the FBI and the person who helped solve the mystery of the whereabouts of the three civil rights workers that went missing on June 21, 1964. He was Commander of the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol in Meridian, Mississippi. But the identity of the local Neshoba County Citizen that helped the FBI is still unknown. I know who is America’s unsung hero!
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‘Mississippi Burning’ KKK Leader Edgar Ray Killen, Dies In Prison At 92 | Los Angeles Times
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Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past
America’s top historians set the record straight on the most pernicious myths about our nation’s past.
The United States is in the grip of a crisis of bad history. Distortions of the past promoted in the conservative media have led large numbers of Americans to believe in fictions over facts, making constructive dialogue impossible and imperiling our democracy.
In Myth America, Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer have assembled an all-star team of fellow historians to push back against this misinformation. The contributors debunk narratives that portray the New Deal and Great Society as failures, immigrants as hostile invaders, and feminists as anti-family warriors—among numerous other partisan lies. Based on a firm foundation of historical scholarship, their findings revitalize our understanding of American history.
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Former Inmate Says Killen Confessed In Letters * explain YouTube
16 WAPT Exclusive: An cellmate to Edgar Ray Killen says Killen confessed to murders in documents.
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The following book is a great addition to the above and can be used to answer and further your search for ancestors that can bring pride to you. We come from strong roots, discover and take pride!
Black Roots: A Beginners Guide To Tracing The African American Family Tree
Trace, document, record, and write your family’s history with this easy-to-read, step-by-step authoritative guide.
Finally, here is the fun, easy-to-use guide that African Americans have been waiting for since Alex Haley published Roots more than twenty-five years ago. Written by the leading African American professional genealogist in the United States who teaches and lectures widely, Black Roots highlights some of the special problems, solutions, and sources unique to African Americans. Based on solid genealogical principles and designed for those who have little or no experience researching their family’s past, but valuable to any genealogist, this book explains everything you need to get started, including: where to search close to home, where to write for records, how to make the best use of libraries and the Internet, and how to organize research, analyze historical documents, and write the family history.
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-a list of the traps even experienced researchers often fall into that hamper their research
In keeping withour mission of providing and being your source of information on Black History we also invite you to view the following for posts you may also be interested in. Also use the “Blog List” link for the full content list.
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For Black History Month 2020, we posted daily. These posts focus on the reality of Black life in America after the Civil War culminating in the landmark Brown v Board of Education that changed so many of the earlier practices. To see the posts, click here
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Schomburg – The man who built a library
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In Mississippi Burning we see once again that despite the myths of the lazy Black who was happing being enslaved that we have a long history of working to not only disprove the myth, but to regain those rights. We also see the price paid for seeking to guarantee those rights are available to all citizens. We realize the extent and brutality that people are willing to use to prevent all citizens from enjoying those rights and freedoms. We sometimes lose the emotional and psychological scars inflicted. We see those who despite it continue to work for those rights. We see carnage that is down right unAmerican. What can we do about it? Stop pointing fingers, stop blaming people who are no longer with us and do something to prevent it from permeating the next generation, realizing that silence is assumed to be acceptance of it.