Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 7 November 2002 — Page 12

The Muncie Times • November 7, 2002 • Page 11

NEWS BRIEFS

NEWS BRIEFS from pg. 10 rejected in the 2000 election. Seeking to get things right before the Nov. 5 gubernatorial election, in which the president's younger brother, Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, will be trying, to fend off McBride, Miami-Dade authorities have stepped up training of poll workers. The county is also hiring a monitoring group, the Washington-ba ed Center for Democracy, to observe polling. Sacrifices For The Right For Blacks To Vote New York It was an old-fashioned lynching, carried out with the help of county officials that came to symbolize hardcore resistance to integration. Dead were three civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, a id James Chaney. All three shot in the dark of night on a lonely road in Neshoba County, Mississippi. Many people predicted such a tragedy when the Mississippi Summer Project, an effort that would bring hundreds of college-age volunteers to "the most totalitarian state in the country" was announced in April 1964. The FBI’s allout search for the conspirators who killed the three young men, depicted in the movie "Mississippi Burning," was successful, leading three years later to a trial in the courtroom of one of America's most

determined segregationist judges. Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Klu Klux Klan of Mississippi, sent word in May 1964 to the Klansmen of Lauderdale and Neshoba counties that it was time to "activate Plan 4." Plan 4 provided for "the elimination" of the despised civil rights activist Michael Schwerner, who the Klan called "Goatee" or "JewBoy." Schwerner, the first white civil rights worker based outside of the capitol of Jackson, had earned the enmity of the Klan by organizing a black boycott of a white-owned business and aggressively trying to register blacks in and around Meridian to vote. The Klan's first attempt to eliminate Schwerner came on June 16, 1964 in the rural Neshoba County community of Longdale [LINK TO MAP]. Schwerner had visited Longdale on Memorial Day to ask permission of the black congregation at Mount Zion Church to use their church as the site of a "Freedom School." The Klan knew of Schwerner's Memorial Day visit to Longdale and expected him to return for a business meeting held at the church on the evening of June 16. About 10 p.m., when the Mount Zion meeting broke up, seven black men and three black women left the building to discover thirty men lined up in military fashion with rifles and shotguns. More men were gathered at the rear of the church. Frustrated when their search

for "Jew-Boy" was unsuccessful, some of the Klan members began beating the departing blacks. Ten gallons of diesel fuel were removed from one of the Klan member's cars and spread around the inside of the church. Mount Zion Church was soon engulfed in flames. News of the beatings and fire reached Michael Schwerner in Oxford, Ohio. Schwerner and his twenty-one-year-old chief aide, a native black Meridian named James Chaney, were in Ohio to attend a three-day program sponsored by the National Council of Churches to train recruits for the Mississippi Summer Project. Among those being trained for a summer of work aimed at improving the lives of black Mississippians was a Queens College student named Andrew Goodman, who Schwerner convinced to come to Meridian. Anxious to get back to Mississippi to learn what they could a'bout the disturbing events in Longdale, Schwerner, Chaney, and the newlyrecruited Goodman loaded into a blue CORE-owned Ford station wagon in the early morning hours of June 20 for long trip back to Meridian. The next day, after a short night's sleep and a breakfast in Meridian, the three civil rights workers were again in the CORE wagon heading northwest towards Longdale. Longdale was in Neshoba County, known as a highrisk area for civil rights workers. Lawrence Rainey,

Neshoba County Sheriff, and his deputy, Cecil Price, were both members of the Klan. Although their Klan membership was not generally known, both had reputations as being tough on blacks. Rainey had been elected sheriff the previous November after campaigning as "the man who can cope with situations that might arise." In Neshoba County, it was well understood that the "situations" Rainey referred to meant meddlesome interference by outsiders with Mississippi's stateenforced policy of segregation. Schwerner told Meridian CORE worker Sue Brown that they should be back in the CORE office in Meridian by 4:00. If they weren't back by 4:30, she should start making phone calls. Schwerner. Chaney, and Goodman began their Midsummer's Day visit to Neshoba County with an inspection of the burned out remains of Mount Zion Church. They then visited the homes of four black members of the congregation to learn more about the incident. At one of the homes, the three civil rights workers were warned that a group of white men ► were looking for them. About 3 p.m., the trio was ready to head back to the relative safety of their Meridian office. There were two possible routes to Meridian. The most direct route was the road they had come up, Highway 491, a narrow clay road intersected by numerous dirt roads. An ambush would be easy on

491. The other, less direct route was a blacktopped Highway 16, which would take them west through Philadelphia, the county seat. Chaney turned onto Highway 16. Deputy Sheriff Price was at that time heading east on Highway 16. A few miles outside of Philadephia, Price spotted the well-known CORE wagon heading in his direction. Schwerner and Goodman most like were crouched low in their seats, allowing Price to see only the black driver, James Chaney. Price shouted over his radio, "I've got a good one! George Raymond!" (Raymond was a black civil rights leader hated by Klan throughout Mississippi.) Price did a quick U-turn and headed back after his quarry. Chaney pulled the CORE wagon over to the side of the road just inside the Philadelphia city limits. Price arrested Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney, allegedly for suspicion of having been involved in the church arson, and deposited the three in the Neshoba County jail. Soon thereafter he met with the Neshoba County Klan kleagle, or recruiter, Edgar Ray Killen to tell him of his exciting catch and to plan the deadly conspiracy that would unfold later that night. Some of what happened over the next seven hours in the Neshoba County jail is known. We know that Schwerner asked to make a phone call.but his request was denied. If he weren't concerned about his NEWS BRIEFS cent, pg.14