After Over Four Decades, Justice Still Eludes Family of 3 Civil Rights Workers Slain

[EFerrari]

After Over Four Decades, Justice Still Eludes Family of 3 Civil Rights Workers Slain in Mississippi Burning Killings



As the Justice Department announces it has closed nearly half of its investigations into unresolved killings from the civil rights era, we look back at the 1964 murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, the subject of the new documentary Neshoba: The Price of Freedom. Although dozens of white men are believed to have been involved in the murders and cover-up, only one man, a Baptist preacher named Edgar Ray Killen, is behind bars today. Four suspects are still alive in the case. We play excerpts of Neshoba and speak with its co-director, Micki Dickoff. We’re also joined by the brothers of two of the victims, Ben Chaney and David Goodman. And we speak with award-winning Mississippi-based journalist Jerry Mitchell of the Clarion-Ledger, who’s spent the past twenty years investigating unresolved civil rights murder cases, as well as Bruce Watson, author of the new book Freedom Summer: The Savage Season that Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy.

Guests:

Ben Chaney, brother of James Chaney, who was murdered in Mississippi in 1964.

David Goodman, brother of Andrew Goodman, who was murdered in Mississippi in 1964.

Micki Dickoff, co-director of Neshoba: The Price of Freedom. The film opens tonight in New York at Cinema Village.

Jerry Mitchell, award-winning investigative reporter for the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi.

Bruce Watson, author of the new book Freedom Summer: The Savage Season that Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy.

_________________________

JUAN GONZALEZ: The Department of Justice recently announced FBI agents have closed nearly half of the department’s 122 investigations into unresolved killings from the civil rights era. For the first time, the Justice Department has made public a list of victims and the status of the investigations.

Among the sixty-two cases still open is the notorious murder of three civil rights activists in Mississippi in June 1964. The Mississippi Burning case is the subject of a new documentary titled Neshoba: The Price of Freedom. It opens tonight in New York at Cinema Village.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/13/after_over_four_decades_justice_still

Must see teevee. Video & transcript at link.

[zeemike]

1. Thanks for that link.

I have a personal interest in it because I was one of the 500 sailors sent in to hunt for the bodies by Johnson.
It was my schooling on what racism and Jim Crow laws of the south that changed my life.
I am still angry that these assholes got away with it all these years....may they all burn in hell.

[EFerrari]

2. I thought I knew a little about this story but this piece set me back.

How long were you guys there? That must have been some really, really difficult duty. :(

[zeemike]

7. We were there until they found the bodies.

And the actual job was not that bad, but what was difficult was dealing with the white racist and not saying anything.
We had been warned by our commanding officer that we were not to engage the people or participate in anything that could be construed as supporting the KKK.
So when they would come up to us and start spouting their racist talking points we had to say silent....which was a good thing because sometimes the best way to learn is to keep your mouth shut.
We were there not so much because they thought we could find the bodies but as a show of force that the government was serious about it and so our biggest effect was just for show.
And it did have an effect when our caravan of busses trucks and police cars would come to some small town....they could not ignore us.

[EFerrari]

8. Have you written about this?

That's story a lot of people would like to read. Were where you billeted? I bet they couldn't ignore you.

[zeemike]

10. Only in responses to post like this.

We were stationed in Meridian where there was a naval air station.
They had us broken up into 4 units of 100 sailors each in two busses with a stake bed truck and several government cars and state police cars...We were sent us out every day to different places....mostly small towns and yes it was hard to ignore that caravan when it rolled into those small towns.
The FBI guy that headed it told us that we probably not find them just by looking but that they will turn someone into telling where they were....and that is what happened....they gave the informant a farm in Michigan in exchange for the information.
I saw the Movie Mississippi Burning and I don't know how accurate that was...but it could have went down that way.

[EFerrari]

17. You should write it up. There's a real hunger right now

for this history.

[zeemike]

23. Perhaps I should.

My perspective would be from a naive white boy plopped down in the midst of a social system totally foreign and totally evil.

[EFerrari]

24. The anniversary is not that far away.

I'd love hear as much as you remember and what you think of it all now, that's for sure.

[zeemike]

27. Thank you....I will take that up soon.

And the thing is that much of what I see today reminds me of that time.

[zeemike]

28. I took your advice and posted it in a nornal here.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8955097

[ConsAreLiars]

20. You really should spend some time recording/recounting your direct experiences.

Post them on DU and even if ignored by the current gang of trivia-talkers, add those bits of first-person history to your journal. Studs Terkel recorded stories like you have, but, with him gone and print media going, getting stuff you have to share online anywhere is the only way to pass it forward.

(and K&R the OP)

[zeemike]

22. Perhaps you are right.

I had always considered my role in this part of history as trivial....but maybe not.
I did get a view or the situation from the bottom...and perhaps someone would find my experiences interesting.

[ConsAreLiars]

25. At the bottom is where reality is found and known.

Above that are generalizations, abstractions, agenda and faith/profit driven narratives, spin, propaganda. Some broader overviews are of great value, but the testing of which is valid has to be based on the realities experienced at the base level of who, what, where, when.

After ignoring the journal option for a while, I decided that leaving some record of the world I experienced was better than leaving none. That reality, those encounters, those people I met, the worlds I experienced are not, and cannot be, recorded by any one else. Same for you and yours and those you knew.

(edit typo)

[zeemike]

26. Your point well taken.

And yes I suppose there is something to be learned from my experiences, and sharing them could be helpful.
Thanks for the suggestions.

[AnArmyVeteran]

14. What's sad is the level of hate now is as bad as it was then.

And the same kind of people who are peddling hate today are like the hatemongers in the 1960s, but the hate from the right has grown to include Hispanics, blacks, liberals, the media, government and Muslims. There was no cable news, hate radio or the internet to fan the flames of hatred like we have now and I believe it's spiraling downward and out of control.

We're headed for another 'Mississippi Burning' incident very soon which will target one or more of the groups I mentioned.

[EFerrari]

16. The tension does seem to be rising.

That's one reason I posted this OP. The people on this panel have a lot to teach. :hi:

[alsame]

3. K&R.

[G_j]

4. I watched this morning

I was mesmerized.
There is a whole lot of history people don't know about.

[EFerrari]

6. I have to watch again.

I'd never heard about all the black bodies that were found during that search.

[amborin]

5. &R

[RamboLiberal]

9. I'm in the process of reading Freedom Summer

I highly recommend it.

Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy

From The Washington Post
It was known as the "long, hot summer," the place being Mississippi and the time being 1964. That the phrase came from the work of the state's most famous and distinguished native son, William Faulkner, was not without irony since Faulkner, who had died two years earlier, had urged his fellow Mississippians to be calm and decent in the face of the bigotry, discrimination and violence that were tearing them apart. The summer was long and hot not merely because summer in Mississippi is always long and hot but because the leadership of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had chosen to subject the state to what Bruce Watson calls "a racial firestorm."

It came in the form of the Mississippi Summer Project, better known as Freedom Summer. For the most part outrages committed by whites against blacks in Mississippi went unnoticed elsewhere, but the SNCC was determined to change that. Watson, whose useful, thorough chronicle of this unjustly forgotten time is marred by an occasional lapse into overheated prose, describes the SNCC's strategy as follows:

"What if, instead of Mississippi's black folk struggling in isolation, hundreds of college students from all across the country poured into the state? Wouldn't America pay attention then? And what if, along with registration drives, these volunteers staffed Freedom Schools, teaching black kids subjects their 'separate but equal' schools would never teach? Black history. Black literature. The root causes of poverty. What if, in the spirit of America's new Peace Corps, this 'domestic Peace Corps' set up Freedom Houses all over Mississippi, with libraries, day cares, and evening classes in literacy and voting rights? And what if, at the culmination of the summer, delegates from a new Freedom Party went to the Democratic National Convention to claim, beneath the spotlight of network news, that they, not Mississippi's all-white delegation, were the rightful representatives from the Magnolia State?"

John Lewis, who then was 24 years old and chairman of the SNCC, put it this way: "Before the Negro people get the right to vote, there will have to be a massive confrontation, and it will probably come this summer. . . . We are going to Mississippi full force." Actually, the "force" was rather small -- a few hundred college students and other young people -- but so far as white Mississippi was concerned, it was an invading army. Mississippi in the 1960s "was a mean and snarling state, run by tight-lipped politicians, bigoted sheriffs, and cops 'not playing with' anyone who crossed them." One notable Mississippian, Walker Percy, wrote: "During the past ten years, Mississippi as a society reached a condition which can only be described, in an analogous but exact sense of the word, as insane."

http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Summer-Mississippi-America-Democracy/dp/0670021709/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1281734044&sr=8-1

[pnorman]

11. I just recently bought and downloaded that book from Audible.com

It was truly heart-rending listening to it, but ultimately it was inspiring. The raw courage of knowingly exposing themselves to hostility, injury, even death! In the military, you'd get decorations and promotions for such valor! But knowing that there'd likely be NO medals --- even your death would be applauded by some of your "fellow Americans"? That went well beyond courage!

Thanks for posting this!

[EFerrari]

12. BookTV presentation:

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/294387-1

[EFerrari]

13. Kick for the evening crew.

:kick:

[G_j]

15. kick

[niyad]

18. k and r

[laughingliberal]

19. Thanks. I think a lot who were raised in the era of Reagan have no idea what price we paid for...

the rights they take for granted. I hope many will take the time to see this.

[EFerrari]

21. I had to go back and read because I was born the year after Brown.

I remember watching King on television and my mother explaining to me but she shielded me from the worst of what happened.

[revolution breeze]

29. Another "unsolved" case

Mack Charles Parker. Those were dark days in the South. http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/parker.htm

[malaise]

30. I thought murder cases remained open

for ever.

[deaniac21]

31. The police don't waste a lot of time on investigations where

most of the perpetuators and witnesses are probably dead unless someone comes forth with new information.

[LWolf]

32. And Killen wasn't behind bars until 2005.

He had 41 years of freedom before he was finally held accountable.

[Enrique]

33. omg that footage of little Ben Chaney at his brother's funeral

crying and singing "We shall overcome".

That movie looks like a must-see. Thanks for posting. :thumbsup: