Mississippi Freedom Trail unveils new marking in remembrance of the Neshoba county murders of 1964 in Philadelphia

 Via WTOK TV

June 14, 2024

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. (WTOK) - The Mississippi Freedom Trail unveiled its newest marker in Philadelphia.

The marker is in remembrance of the Neshoba county murders of 1964 that featured three men, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, who were participating in an initiative to register black voters but were jailed and later killed by members of the KKK.

News 11 spoke to the mayor of Philadelphia James A. Young who said that it’s a reminder of the past and a marker showing a better future.

“I think it’s a great day. We remember it but when you have markers to remind you of some of the incidents that happened; we never need to forget our history, but as I said in the intro, we should not live in the past but never forget the past. It’s key. I mean every time people pass this marker, they’re gonna remember these guys lost their lives trying to get us registered to vote. So, we should vote every day.” said Mayor Young.

On June 15th, the Neshoba County Coalition will host a program that will honor the 60th anniversary of Freedom Summer and remember the deaths of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.

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On June 21, 1964, voter registration volunteers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were arrested in Neshoba County, Mississippi following a traffic stop, 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 their car was pulled over again. The three were abducted, driven to another location, and shot at close range. The bodies were buried in an earthen dam.

LIFE magazine sent Bill Eppridge to Mississippi immediately after the news broke – he had been covering Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival. Several of Eppridge’s photographs from that time are featured in the exhibit "1964".  Exhibits - 1964 - Monroe - Gallery of Photography (monroegallery.com)

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner posthumously receive Presidential Medal Of Freedom

Bill Eppridge: Mrs. Chaney and young Ben, James Chaney funeral, Meridian, Mississippi, 1964

Via Gothamist

Today, President Obama is presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the county's highest civilian honor, to a number of people, like economist Robert Solow, actress Meryl Streep, musician Stevie Wonder, choreographer Alvin Ailey (in a posthumous honor) and composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. But three people are not celebrities, notable scientists or politicians—they were three young men who were murdered while registering black voters during the "Freedom Summer" of 1964.

The White House press release noted that the medal is "presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors" and noted the honorees' work:

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were civil rights activists and participants in “Freedom Summer,” an historic voter registration drive in 1964. As African Americans were systematically being blocked from voter rolls, Mr. Chaney, Mr. Goodman, and Mr. Schwerner joined hundreds of others working to register black voters in Mississippi. They were murdered at the outset of Freedom Summer. Their deaths shocked the nation and their efforts helped to inspire many of the landmark civil rights advancements that followed.

Chaney, from Mississippi, and Goodman and Schwerner, of New York, were traveling in Philadelphia, Mississippi, to investigate the burning of a black church, when they were arrested for speeding. They were, the NY Times reports, "slain after their release from jail in what is believed to have been a Ku Klux Klan ambush. Their bodies were found 44 days later buried in an earthen dam." Their deaths are "widely seen as helping inspire the historic civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 1965, and the passage of the Voting Rights Act the same year."

The men who shot and buried the three were convicted of civil rights violations, but not murder. In 2005, Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood revisited the case and tried Edgar Ray Killen, considered the ringleader in the murders. Killen was ultimately convicted of manslaughter, but not murder. During Killen's trial, Goodman's mother read a postcard her son, an Upper West Sider who had been a student at Queens College, sent to her on June 21, 1964, the last day of his life, "Dear Mom and Dad, I have arrived safely in Meridian, Miss. This is a wonderful town, and the weather is fine. I wish you were here. The people in this city are wonderful, and our reception was very good. All my love, Andy."

Killen, 89, is serving a 60-year prison sentence.

Related: June 21, 1964: The Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner

A four block stretch of the Upper West Side, west of the West End Avenue, was carved out in 1967 to created "Freedom Place," to pay tribute to Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. A plaque pay tribute to their how the men gave "their lives in the unending struggle for freedom and democracy."

John Doar, Federal Lawyer in Battle Against Segregation, Dies at 92

Charles Moore: James Meredith is escorted to registrationat the University of Mississippi by Chief US Marshall James McShane and Assitsant Attorney General for Civil Rights John Doer, 1962

--Via The New York Times

John Doar, who was a leader in the federal government’s legal efforts to dismantle segregation in the South during the most volatile period of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and who returned to government service to lead the team that made the constitutional case for the possible impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 92.

He escorted James Meredith onto the campus of the University of Mississippi in 1962, even as then-Gov. Ross Barnett and angry crowds sought to keep the school segregated. Doar later was the lead prosecutor in the federal trial arising from the deaths of three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner. Those killings inspired the 1988 film "Mississippi Burning."

Full obituary here.




Related: June 21, 1964: The Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner

CBS News: 50 Years Later, Civil Rights

A half-century after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act, CBS News' Bob Schieffer hosted a symposium on Americans' historic fight against segregation, and the continuing struggle for equal rights for all. In this preview, the tumultuous summer of 1964 is reviewed, when three civil rights workers went missing. It also explores the impact of the civil rights movement through first-hand accounts of the activists and public figures who continue to fight for social justice today

"CBS News: 50 Years Later, Civil Rights," moderated by Bob Schieffer features civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, actress Whoopi Goldberg and others. Watch the full symposium here, and more here.

FREEDOM SUMMER

 

 

 

 

 

In the hot and deadly summer of 1964, the nation’s eyes were riveted on Mississippi.

 

 



Over ten memorable weeks known as Freedom Summer, more than 700 student volunteers joined with organizers and local African Americans in an historic effort to shatter the foundations of white supremacy in Mississippi, the nation’s most segregated state. The summer was marked by sustained and deadly violence, including the notorious murders of three civil rights workers, countless beatings, the burning of thirty-five churches, and the bombing of seventy homes and community centers.

In the face of this violence, these organizers, volunteers, and Mississippians worked together to canvass for voter registration, create Freedom Schools, and establish an alternative challenge to the State Democratic Party — the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Borne of Freedom Summer, and in response to the challenges of registering voters directly within hostile Mississippi, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party registered its own voters outside of the discriminatory system, ultimately sending a delegation of 68 members to attend the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City to confront and unseat the all-white delegation.

Directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker and MacArthur "Genius" Fellow Stanley Nelson (Freedom Riders, The Murder of Emmett Till), FREEDOM SUMMER highlights an overlooked but essential element of the Civil Rights Movement: the patient and long-term efforts by both outside activists and local citizens in Mississippi to organize communities and register black voters — even in the face of intimidation, physical violence and death. The Freedom Summer story reminds us that the movement that ended segregation was far more complex than most of us know.

American Experience will broadcast the film this summer, which marks both the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer and the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder decision, which struck down key protections afforded by the landmark civil rights legislation borne of the political momentum generated by this historical movement — The Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Join  the Bronx Documentary Center this Saturday, July 12, at 8:15 PM for Freedom Summer
Film by Emmy award-winner Stanley Nelson followed by panel discussion with veterans of the 1964 Freedom Rides. The event is part of the Bronx Documentary Center’s summer exhibition and program series, The 60s: Decade of Change.

Watch online via PBS here.

Related: June 21, 1964: The Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner

 

June 21, 1964: The Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner

Bill Eppridge: Mrs. Chaney and young Ben, James Chaney funeral, Meridian, Mississippi, 1964

June 21, 1964: The Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner

Steve Schapiro: John Lewis, Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1965

Rep. John Lewis 50th Anniversary of Mississippi Freedom Summer and the Lives of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner

The 50th Anniversary of Mississippi Freedom Summer

"a celebration of the LIFE magazine photographer who famously shadowed an unknown act in the US on February 1964, The Beatles"



 Screaming Girls, JFK Airport, NY, Febraury 7, 1964.

Copyright Bill Eppridge

“Ladies and Gentlemen The Beatles!”

The Santa Fe Reporter

April 22, 2014

By Enrique Limón

 

Hot off the heels of When Cool Was King, Monroe Gallery of Photography unveils their latest, Bill Eppridge: 1964, a celebration of the LIFE magazine photographer who famously shadowed an unknown act in the US on February 1964, The Beatles.

 

Eppridge was at John F Kennedy airport on assignment for the mag. After consulting with John Lennon, Ringo Starr gave the OK to Eppridge to shadow the group for the next few days and exposed American masses to the British sensation.

 

“Bill never set pictures up; he liked to find pictures and make pictures that way,” Eppridge’s widow Adrienne Aurichio tells SFR.

 

Eppridge’s assignment was just to capture the Fab Four’s arrival. “But nobody expected what happened out there,” she says of the group of rabid fans, some 3,000 strong. 

 

“Bill was somebody who actually did a lot of photo essays,” Aurichio continues. “He liked to do stories in-depth, which is why he stayed with The Beatles for six days.” 

 

The photographer’s gumption paid off and resulted in iconic shots like the group hanging out inside their room at the Plaza Hotel, practicing for their career-making debut on The Ed Sullivan Show and later performing at Carnegie Hall.

 

Those shots are now immortalized in the book The Beatles: Six Days that Changed the World, which Aurichio edited before her husband’s untimely death in October of last year.

 

Aurichio presents and signs the book at the art opening this Friday.

 

“When he saw things happening, he would just follow the story,” she says of her late husband’s approach. “He would try and tell the story as if he were describing it to you and you as a writer would write it. He wanted to show you the story in his pictures, so he would methodically go about it.”

 

Bill Eppridge: 1964

5-7 pm Friday, April 25

Monroe Gallery of Photography

112 Don Gaspar Ave.,

992-08

June 21, 1964: The Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner

August 1964: An earthen dam where bodies of Chaney, Goodman , and Schwerner were found. Federal agents can be seen collecting evidence. Photographer Bill Eppridge was not allowed access to the site so he rented a helicopter and flew overhead to get this picture. © Bill Eppridge


On June 21, 1964, three young civil rights workers—a 21-year-old black Mississippian, James Chaney, and two white New Yorkers, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24—were murdered near Philadelphia, in Nashoba County, Mississippi. They had been working to register black voters in Mississippi during Freedom Summer and had gone to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on trumped-up charges, imprisoned for several hours, and then released after dark into the hands of the Klu Klux Klan who beat and murdered them. It was later proven in court that a conspiracy existed between members of Neshoba County's law enforcement and the Ku Klux Klan to kill them.

LIFE magazine sent Bill Eppridge to Neshoba County, Mississippi immediately after the news broke. There are no pictures of the crime - just the brutal aftermath, and the devastating grief and sorrow brought upon one family.

Bill Eppridge: Mrs. Chaney and young Ben, James Chaney funeral, Meridian, Mississippi, 1964

Bill Eppridge: The Chaney family as they depart for the burial of James Chaney, Meridian, Mississippi, August 7, 1964


The FBI arrested 18 men in October 1964, but state prosecutors refused to try the case, claiming lack of evidence. The federal government then stepped in, and the FBI arrested 18 in connection with the killings. In 1967, seven men were convicted on federal conspiracy charges and given sentences of three to ten years, but none served more than six. No one was tried on the charge or murder. The contemptible words of the presiding federal judge, William Cox, give an indication of Mississippi's version of justice at the time: "They killed one ni---r, one Jew, and a white man. I gave them all what I thought they deserved." Another eight defendants were acquitted by their all-white juries, and another three ended in mistrials. One of those mistrials freed Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen—believed to be the ringleader—after the jury in his case was deadlocked by one member who said she couldn't bear to convict a preacher.


Related: Neshoba: The Price of Freedom



Bill Eppridge's photographs of The Cheney Family and his coverage of Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign were included in the exhibition "History's Big Picture", Monroe Gallery, July 1 - September 26, 2011

The photographs will also be featured in the exhibition "The Long Road: From Selma to Ferguson", Monroe gallery, July 3 - September 28, 2015.

AS TIME GOES BY: Woodstock, August 15 - 17, 1969

A gallery of photographs by Bill Eppridge and John Dominis, “Woodstock: Life’s Best Photos,” was published this time last year by Life.com.

Bill Eppridge, who photographed the Woodstock Music and Art Fair 41 years ago, remembers it as a beautiful coda to a painful decade.

"For me, it was a visual feast, a never-ending succession of moments that is impossible to forget,” he says.

Mr. Eppridge, now 71 and renowned as a teacher and mentor, joined Life magazine as a staff photographer in the early ’60s and stayed until the magazine folded in 1972. He covered many of the most important stories of the time, including the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign. It was Mr. Eppridge who made the iconic image of a stunned busboy holding the senator moments after he was shot. He collaborated with the reporter James Mills on a picture essay and article in 1965 that followed the lives of two young drug addicts in New York. (The next year, Mr. Mills published his account as “The Panic in Needle Park,” which was made into a movie in 1971.)

In the accompanying audio slide show, Mr. Eppridge speaks about being accepted at Woodstock even though he represented an established and powerful institution — as Life was in its day. “They knew who I was but they didn’t care,” he recalls.

It was not the first time he’d been accepted under unorthodox circumstances. George P. Hunt, the managing editor of Life magazine, told this story behind “Needle Park” in 1965, when Mr. Mills and Mr. Eppridge briefly became “denizens of the junkie world”:

Eppridge, in fact, came so much to look the part that he was picked up by the narcos in a hotel lobby; they thought he had stolen both his cameras and Life credentials and were about to haul him off when Mills (who looks more like a cop) came up to straighten things out.

©The New York Times

Bill Eppridge: "An American Treasure" is on exhibit at Monroe Gallery of Photography through September 27. See a related review from the Albuquerque Journal here.