This may strike some of you as bizarre or maybe even a tad macabre, but every now and again, when I contemplate someone’s recent death, I wonder what the decedent was thinking (or how they were feeling) during their final moments before slipping into eternity…
This habit of mine surely includes historical figures, such as my recent first time watch of President John F. Kennedy's final speech—given on November 22, 1963—in Fort Worth, Texas. I sat totally captivated by the charisma and charm on display by our nation's 39th President during that high noon address to the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, and I could not help but feel eerily ill at ease in knowing that he didn't have even the slightest clue that within an hour or so of that speech, that his life would be taken by assassins' bullets in the Dealey Plaza in neighboring Dallas.
Photo of President John F. Kennedy a little more than an hour before he was murdered in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963
Much of President Kennedy's struggles in Texas and across the Deep South stemmed from the fact that he had deliberately chosen to engage the Civil Right Movement, in general, and maintained seemingly warm public relations with several of its most popular leaders, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Dr. Martin Luther King, and the NAACP’s Medgar Evers, the latter of whom was killed by an assassin’s bullet in June of 1963—only five months before Kennedy met his own tragic fate.
As 1963 turned into ‘64, Kennedy's successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, set about the business of ensuring that the Civil Rights Act, one that would reverse nearly a century's worth of Jim Crow segregation, was passed. While Johnson's signing of that Act was a monumental achievement, the issue of Black voting rights remained problematic in the Deep South.
President Lyndon Johnson shakes Dr. Martin Luther King’s hand after signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964…
To that end, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was among the vanguard of civil rights organizations mobilizing young men and women of diverse racial backgrounds to travel throughout the South in order to register Black voters in areas in which local laws, customs, and Ku Klux Klan intimidation had prevented them from voting since the late 19th Century.
An effigy hung from a street post in segregated Miami, Florida during the 1940 election season warning local Blacks, like my Hobbs ancestors, against voting…
60 years ago today, three CORE workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, arose and began preparing to spend the day educating and registering potential Black voters in Neshoba County, Mississippi. The trio had no way in knowing that as they dressed, ate breakfast, and set out to handle their critically important business that the day would be their very last full day on Earth.
Chaney, a 21-year old Black Mississippi native, met New York natives Goodman (age 20) and Schwerner (age 24), during a CORE training session in Ohio; the trio were then assigned to Northern Mississippi in June of ‘64 to lead voter registration efforts.
On or about May 25, 1964, Chaney and Schwerner spoke to the congregation at the Black Mount Zion United Methodist Church in Longdale, Mississippi about setting up a Freedom School and organizing a voter registration drive at the church. When the Ku Klux Klan got word, they harassed and beat church members the following week—and then set the church building on fire.
The burned remains of Mount Zion Church in Neshoba County, Mississippi after the KKK savagely beat church members before torching the edifice to the ground after services in 1964…
Several weeks later, on or about June 21st, Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman drove to inspect the burned ruins of Mount Zion, and as they drove away in a station wagon, Chaney, the driver, was stopped by local law enforcement and arrested for speeding—while Goodman and Schwerner were held at the Neshoba County Jail for "investigation."
When fellow civil rights workers became worried after the trio did not check in on the evening of the 21st, they called the county jail to inquire as to whether they were being held. The jail's clerk, upon orders of Sheriff Lee Rainey and Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, denied that they were in custody.
In the meantime, Rainey and Price, both members of the Ku Klux Klan and the equally racist White Citizens' Council, informed their fellow Klansmen that they had captured the two “Northern Agitators” and one “uppity N-word” who had stirred up talk of Black voting in Neshoba County. Later that evening, the three young civil rights workers were beaten and then shot multiple times by the Klansmen and buried on a farm several miles south of town.
Dr. Martin Luther King holding up pictures of missing civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner during a press conference in June of 1964
Within weeks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation descended upon Mississippi to find the bodies; of worthy mention is the fact that United States Navy divers, unable to locate the missing civil rights workers in nearby lakes and swamps, discovered seven (7) other bodies of missing Blacks in the process!
On or about August 4, 1964, following a tip, the FBI located Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner’s decomposing bodies in a shallow grave in a nearby Earthen dam.
FBI photo of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner's decomposing remains
As was typical in this era, the local district attorney was unwilling to charge the white defendants with murdering a Black man or his white allies; contributing to this reticence were observations by FBI informants that local law enforcement served as a valuable resource to the Klan by providing information like car license plate numbers and reports of prominent civil rights leaders flying in and out of the state.
Nevertheless, U.S. Attorney John Doar indicted several under federal civil rights charges and in 1967, the following were convicted: Deputy Sheriff Price, Klan Imperial Wizard Samuel Bowers, Alton Wayne Roberts, Jimmy Snowden, Billey Wayne Posey, Horace Barnett, and Jimmy Arledge. None of the convicts served longer that six years for their murderous acts.
Among the acquitted included Sheriff Rainey and Edgar Ray Killens, a preacher and architect of the lynching who one juror refused to convict "because he was a minister." In a bit of delayed justice, in 2005, "Reverend" Killens, then 80 years old, was finally convicted of manslaughter and was sentenced to 3 consecutive 20 year sentences. Killens died in a Mississippi State Penitentiary at the age of 92.
“Reverend” Edgar Ray Killens, shown in a wheelchair during his 2005 trial for orchestrating the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, died of congestive heart failure and hypertension in state prison in 2018. Defiant to the very end, Killens refused to speak with the FBI about several still living co-conspirators despite the possibility of early release from prison.
As for the legacy of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, one year after they were murdered, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, one that provided Blacks—at least on paper—the full enforcement of the 15th Amendment that was ratified way back in 1870, but seldom enforced until the 1960’s.
Lest we forget…
I was a little kid when all this happened but I read a good deal and my teachers and my parents said things in my earshot. To this day I am still terrified of the depravity and duplicitousness of which too many white men are capable.