Michael Schwerner
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Michael Schwerner (November 6, 1939 – June 21, 1964), called Mickey by friends and colleagues, was a CORE field worker killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, by the Ku Klux Klan in response to the civil-rights work he coordinated, which included promoting registration to vote among Mississippi African Americans.
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[edit] Biography
Born and raised in New York and of Jewish heritage, Schwerner attended Pelham Memorial High School. When he graduated he attended Michigan State University, originally intending to become a veterinarian. He transferred to Cornell University, however, and switched his major to sociology, going on after graduation to the School of Social Work at Columbia University. While an undergraduate at Cornell, he integrated the school's chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity. He later led a local Congress of Racial Equality group on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, called "Downtown CORE'. The situation in the South led the Schwerners to volunteer to work for National CORE in Mississippi, under the tutelage of Dave Dennis, Mississippi Director of Congress of Racial Equality.
His passionate dedication to civil rights made him a marked man in Mississippi, and he had been a long-sought target of the Klan after he and his wife, Rita, had taken over a field office and established a library for the Negroes who were being denied access to the town library in Meridian, Mississippi. He had also tried to establish contact with White working class citizens of Meridian, going door to door to speak with them.
Schwerner's murder occurred near the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi. He and fellow workers, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, were investigating the burning of a church & beating of parishioners, in the wake of Schwerner & Cheney's voter registration rallies for the Congress of Racial Equality. The Sheriff's Deputy, Cecil Price had been accused by the parishioners of stopping their caravan, and forcing the deacons to kneel in the headlights of their own cars, while they were beaten with rifle butts. That same group was identified as the burners of the church.
The three (Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman) were initially arrested by Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price for an alleged traffic violation and taken to the jail in Neshoba County. They were released that evening, without being allowed to telephone, and on the way back to Meridian were stopped by two carloads of KKK members on a remote rural road. The men approached their car and then shot and killed Schwerner, then Goodman, and finally, after chain-whipping and mutilating him, Chaney.
Their bodies remained undiscovered for nearly two months; in the meantime, the case of the missing civil-rights workers became a major national story. Rivers were dredged and many other bodies of murdered Negro men and women were discovered in the process, but they were not investigated. Schwerner's widow, Rita, who also worked in Meridian for CORE, publicly expressed indignation at the way the story was handled, saying that she believed if only Chaney (who was black) were missing and not two white men along with him, the case would not have received nearly as much attention.
Journalist Jerry Mitchell, an award winning investigative reporter for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger had written extensively about the case for many years. Mitchell, who had already earned fame for helping secure convictions in several other high profile Civil Rights Era murder cases, including the assassination of Medgar Evers, the Birmingham Church Bombing, and the murder of Vernon Dahmer, developed new evidence, found new witnesses, and pressured the State to take action. Barry Bradford, an Illinois high school teacher, later famous for helping clear the name of Civil Rights martyr Clyde Kennard, and three students, Allison Nichols, Sarah Siegel, and Brittany Saltiel joined Mitchell's efforts. Their documentary, produced for the National History Day contest presented important new evidence and compelling reasons for reopening the case. They also obtained an interview with Edgar Ray Killen which helped convince the State to reinvestigate. Mitchell was able to determine the identity of "Mr. X" the mystery informer who had helped the FBI discover the bodies and smash the conspiracy of the Klan in 1964, in part using evidence developed by Bradford and the students.
On January 7, 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, an outspoken white supremacist nicknamed "Preacher," pleaded "Not Guilty" to Schwerner's murder, but was found guilty of manslaughter on June 21, 2005.
The film Mississippi Burning and TV movie Attack on Terror are both based on the murders and ensuing FBI investigation. The events leading up to the deaths of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney were dramatized in the TV movie Murder in Mississippi.
[edit] Personality
"He was described by family and friends as friendly, good natured, gentle, mischievous, and "full of life and ideas." He believed all people were essentially good. He named his cocker spaniel "Ghandhi." He loved sports, animals, poker, W. C. Fields, and rock music." [1]
