Nadene Goldfoot
The victims were Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner from New York City, and James Chaney from Meridian, Mississippi . All three were associated with the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) and its member organization, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). They had been working with the Freedom Summer campaign by attempting to register African Americans in Mississippi to vote. They were but only a few of the many Jews who were helping Blacks during this period.
In 1964, Andrew Goodman, recruited by John Lewis, volunteered along with fellow activists Michael Schwerner, his wife Rita Schwerner Bender, and James Chaney to work on the "Freedom Summer" project of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to register black people to vote in Mississippi. Goodman left New York to train and develop civil rights strategies at Western College for Women (now part of Miami University) in Oxford, Ohio. In mid-June, Goodman joined Schwerner in Meridian, Mississippi, where the latter was designated head of the field office. They worked in rural areas on registering blacks to vote.
Andrew Goodman's family and community were steeped in intellectual and socially progressive activism and were devoted to social justice. An activist at an early age, Goodman graduated from the progressive Walden School, which was said to have had a strongly formative influence on his outlook
Civil rights activists were resented and held under suspicion by white Mississippians. Spies paid by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a taxpayer-funded agency, kept track of all northerners and suspected activists. The Commission conducted economic boycotts and intimidation against activists. In 1998 its records were opened by court order, revealing the state's deep complicity in the 1964 murders of three civil right workers because its investigator, A. L. Hopkins, passed on information about the workers, including their car license number, to the Commission. Records showed the Commission passed the information on to the Sheriff of Neshoba County, who was implicated in the murders.
In the early 1960s, Michael Schwerner became active in working for civil rights for African Americans; he led a local Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) group on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, called "Downtown CORE." He participated in a 1963 effort to desegregate Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Maryland. The Ku Klux Klan targeted Schwerner after he and his wife, Rita, had taken over the Meridian CORE field office, where they established a community center for blacks as part of grassroots organizing. Schwerner tried to establish contact with white working-class citizens of Meridian and went door-to-door to speak with them. He also organized a black boycott of a popular variety store until it hired its first African American, under the principle of "don't shop where you can't work".
In 1964, James Cheney, a Black Catholic, met with leaders of the Mt. Nebo Baptist Church to gain their support for letting Michael Schwerner, CORE's local leader, come to address the church members, to encourage them to use the church for voter education and registration. Chaney also acted as a liaison with other CORE members. In 1962, Chaney participated in a Freedom Ride from Tennessee to Greenville, Mississippi, and in another from Greenville to Meridian. He and his younger brother participated in other non-violent demonstrations, as well. James Chaney started volunteering in late 1963, and joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Meridian. He organized voter education classes, introduced CORE workers to local church leaders, and helped CORE workers get around the counties.
The Klu Klux Klan is the main group against Black freedom. It's still active. The Ku Klux Klan, with its long history of violence, is the oldest and most infamous of American hate groups. Although Black Americans have typically been the Klan’s primary target, it also has attacked Jews, immigrants, members of the LGBTQ community and, until recently, Catholics.In the past few years, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a drop in the number of active chapters. Unlike years past, however, this downward trajectory was partially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since 1890 and through the turn of the century, southern states had systematically disenfranchised most black voters by discrimination in voter registration and voting."
The 1960's was the era of an awakened Civil Rights Movement that had been denied the Blacks of the United States. The Civil War had been fought from April 12, 1861 to April 9, 1865, 4 bloody years where brother found he was fighting his brother in the idea of freeing Blacks from slavery. It took 100 years for Americans to actually become aware of the plight of Blacks, and for the Blacks to find people to aid and abet them in this cause.
The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States fought between the Union and the Confederacy, or the North against the South. The central cause of the war was the status of slavery, especially the expansion of slavery into territories acquired as a result of the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican–American War. The end result of this war was the :
(1) Dissolution of the Confederate States, (2) U.S. territorial integrity preserved, (3) Slavery abolished, (4) Beginning of the Reconstruction era, (5) Passage and ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and (6) awareness of the wrongs of slavery and discriminating people for their differences.
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s maternal great-grandfather, Willis Williams, who was born in 1810, was described as “an old slavery time preacher” and an “exhorter” (Papers 1:1). In 1846, when Willis joined Shiloh Baptist Church in Greene County, Georgia, its congregation numbered 50 white and 28 black members, with African Americans actively participating in church affairs and serving on church committees. In 1855 nearly a hundred blacks joined the congregation, including 15-year-old Lucrecia (or Creecy) Daniel. She and Willis were married in the late 1850s or early 1860s, and she bore him five children, including Adam Daniel (A. D.) Williams, King, Jr.’s grandfather. The family left Shiloh Baptist Church when it, like other southern congregations, divided along racial lines at the end of the Civil War.
One cannot forget the Underground Railroad, however, as the 1st act in aiding Blacks in their grief as being last in the world of being freed from slavery since Great Britain had acted earlier without having to have a Civil War to do it. In 1806-07, with the abolition campaign gaining further momentum, legislation was finally passed in both the Commons and the Lords which brought an end to Britain's involvement in the trade. The bill received royal assent in March and the trade was made illegal from 1 May 1807.
The Underground Railroad was a secret network of abolitionists (people who wanted to abolish slavery). They helped African Americans escape from enslavement in the American South to free Northern states or to Canada. The Underground Railroad was the largest anti-slavery freedom movement in North America. It brought between 30,000 and 40,000 fugitives to British North America (now Canada).
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Our 3 Civil Rights advocates had traveled from Meridian to the community of Longdale to talk with congregation members at a black church that had been burned; the church had been a center of community organization.
The trio was arrested following a traffic stop for speeding outside Philadelphia, Mississippi, escorted to the local jail, and held for a number of hours. As the three left town in their car, they were followed by law enforcement and others.
Before leaving Neshoba County, their car was pulled over. The three were abducted, driven to another location, and shot to death at close range. The three men's bodies were taken to an earthen dam where they were buried.
The disappearance of the three men was initially investigated as a missing persons case. The civil rights workers' burnt-out car was found near a swamp three days after their disappearance. An extensive search of the area was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), local and state authorities, and four hundred United States Navy sailors.
The three men's bodies were not discovered until two months later, when the team received a tip. During the investigation it emerged that members of the local White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County Sheriff's Office, and the Philadelphia Police Department were involved in the incident.
The murder of the activists sparked national outrage and an extensive federal investigation, filed as Mississippi Burning (MIBURN), which later became the title of a 1988 film loosely based on the events starring Gene Hackman. 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.
Edgar Ray Killen (January 17, 1925 – January 11, 2018) was a Ku Klux Klan organizer who planned and directed the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, three civil rights activists participating in the Freedom Summer of 1964. He was found guilty in state court of three counts of manslaughter on June 21, 2005, the forty-first anniversary of the crime, and sentenced to 60 years in prison. He appealed the verdict, but the sentence was upheld on April 12, 2007, by the Supreme Court of Mississippi. He died in prison on January 11, 2018, six days before his 93rd birthday.
"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. 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." Since he was tried 41 years after the fact, he only had to serve the last 13 years of his life in prison.
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Goodman_(activist)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Schwerner
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Chaney
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Jewish-Conductor-on-the-Underground-Railroad.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/underground-railroad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Ray_Killen
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Chaney
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred:_A_Tale_of_the_Great_Dismal_Swamp
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