Father's Day

June 21, 1964: a Sunday. Three young civil rights activists journeyed to Neshoba County, Mississippi, to investigate the burning of Mt. Zion church, a gathering place for "the movement." James Chaney, a 21 year old black man, hailed from nearby Meridian, Mississippi. Michael Schwerner, a 24 year old white Jewish man, was a social worker, originally from New York, working for COFO out of Meridian. Andrew Goodman, a 20 year old white, Jewish college student, also from New York, had just completed training on strategies for working for black voter registration. He arrived in Meridian on June 20, ready to tackle the segregated South. June 21 was his first full day in Mississippi.

The three men visited the Mt. Zion ruins, then met with the local COFO group before heading back towards their Meridian base. Chaney, more familiar with the area than the two New Yorkers, was driving the blue Ford station wagon through the winding rural roads. Somewhere around 5pm, Chaney was pulled over, allegedly for speeding, and all three men were arrested and taken to the Neshoba County jail, where they were denied any phone calls.

The sweat that must have trickled down each back: Mississippi in late June, in the early sixties. Three civil rights workers, one black, two Jewish, all young and achingly idealistic, apprehended in one of the most notoriously racist areas of the country. No air conditioning. No equality. Local law enforcement violently protective of their right to white supremacy. Imagine the smell of salt and fear, the rising temperatures of both weather and men.

Probably much to their surprise, Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were released around 10 p.m. that day, permitted to return to their vehicle. They climbed into the Ford, navigated their way back to Highway 19, once again Meridian-bound, undoubtedly both angry and relieved at their capture and release, eager to leave Neshoba County.

Only they never were permitted to leave Neshoba. Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner disappeared that night. On June 22, 1964, the charred remains of the blue Ford station wagon were found near Bogue Chitto swamp. Nearly a month and a half later, the remains of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were found buried in an earthen dam, fifteen feet deep, on a farm six miles outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Justice did not reside in Mississippi in 1964. The brutal murders of three young men went virtually unpunished. As Ben Chaney, James' younger brother, noted in a 1999 speech, the many, many guilty conspirators were essentially slapped on the wrist:

"Three years after their murders, twenty-one Klansmen were arrested by the FBI, and on February 27, 1967, a federal grand jury for the Southern District of Mississippi indicted nineteen members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (White Knights) under Title 18, section 241, for conspiracy 'on or about January 1, 1964, and continuing to, on or about December 4, 1964, to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate Michael Henry Schwerner, James Earl Chaney, and Andrew Goodman.' A two-week federal trial in Meridian, Mississippi, resulted in seven guilty verdicts and sentences ranging from three to ten years."

It would be more than 40 years before anyone was convicted for the deaths of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman, rather than merely conspiring to "injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate them." In January of 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, a Neshoba County minister, was indicted by a Neshoba County grand jury for the murders of the three men -- and on June 21, 2005, exactly forty-one years after the three civil rights workers disappeared, Killen was convicted -- on three counts of manslaughter, not murder. Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman were murdered.

Here in Jackson, Klansman James Ford Seale, was just convicted on two counts of kidnapping and one of conspiracy in connection with the 1964 murders of two black teenagers, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore. Kidnapping and conspiracy, not murder. Dee and Moore were murdered.

Cases are difficult to try more than 40 years later, and the progress this state has made in the willingness to try, convict, and try to right old wrongs should not be overlooked. However, it's also a tricky balance between moving on and not losing our memory. There is something to be said for forgiveness. There is something to be said for honesty. There is still work to be done, and it is not any one person or group's responsibility to do the work. It is a collective imperative.

June 21, 1964, was the day James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were killed. June 21, 1964, was also Father's Day. All of these men died in their early twenties. One of them, Michael, left a young widow, Rita Schwerner, who continues to work for social justice. None lived long enough to experience fatherhood. On this Father's Day, June 17, 2007, I sat again in the sanctuary at Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where the three civil rights workers are memorialized each year. The crowd was smaller than it has been in years past; the 40th anniversary in 2004 was a huge media event, but after the big anniversary, and the subsequent conviction of Killen in 2005, the media has largely exited now. There are fewer cameras, and the story seemed less emphasized, even at the service. So I wanted to tell the story. On this Father's Day, what happened to these three young men should be clearly remembered -- and Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner deserve to be remembered not only as martyrs to a cause, but also as true fathers of change.

This post is dedicated to my dad, Ken Kander. Happy Father's Day...
The information (details of timeline, convictions, etc) was gathered from the following sources: the program and service at Mt. Zion United Methodist Church, Philadelphia, MS; Wikipedia entry on "Mississippi Civil Rights Worker Murders;" Clarion Ledger and Jackson Free Press articles on the trial and convictions of Edgar Ray Killen and James Ford Seale; National Public Radio archives on Chaney, Schwerner, Goodman, Killen, and Seale; and a speech delivered by Ben Chaney to the American Bar Association in 1999.