Three Civil Rights Workers Murdered During Freedom Summer of 1964
Murdered Civil Rights Workers’ Burned Out Car Found in June 1964
Murdered Civil Rights Workers’ Bodies Found August 4, 1964
Fifty seven years ago this week, the bodies of three men were found in an earthen dam in Mississippi. Their names are Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney. The three were murdered in June 1964, because they were working for civil and voting rights for Black citizens as part of what became known as Freedom Summer. Schwerner and Goodman were white and had come from out of state while James Chaney was a local Black leader at only 21 years old. Although they had been missing for around six weeks, Bob Moses and other Freedom Summer leaders knew that they were most likely killed by members of the KKK in collusion with local law enforcement. The work of Freedom Summer continued under this cloud of assumed violence and death. Finally on August 4, an FBI Klan informant led officials to an earthen dam where the bodies were exhumed. A few days later, a funeral was held for James Chaney at his family’s local church. Dave Dennis, another Freedom Summer worker, gave an impassioned eulogy largely inspired by seeing the grieving Ben Chaney, James’ younger brother, sitting with his family near the front of the church. Dave Dennis expressed his profound sadness and frustration at the deaths of those who lost their lives working for racial justice and challenged those in attendance to stand up for their rights even in the face of the violence that took James Chaney’s life. A short video clip from that eulogy is posted below. Please take a couple minutes to watch it in order to get just a glimpse of the cost of securing the right to vote.
Nearly a year later to the day on August 6, 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed and signed into law by President Johnson. Yet the right to vote continues to be threatened in our time. In 2013 the Supreme Court case of Shelby County v. Holder rolled back some aspects of the Voting Rights Act related to states and localities that had a history of voter suppression among people of color. More recently, numerous states and localities are introducing laws under the guise of “voter integrity” the actually result in voter suppression among people of color. During this week in which we remember both the murder of the three men in Mississippi in 1964 and the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, may we give thanks for their witness of true voter integrity and commit ourselves to honoring their legacy by refusing to confuse attempts at voter suppression by falsely calling them “voter integrity.”