$100,000 reward for Mississippi’s infamous Civil Rights murders
by KAREN JUANITA CARRILLO
Special to the AmNews
Originally posted 12/27/2004Because 2004 marked the 40th anniversary of the Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner case, there has been an extra push to finally have justice served against these infamous race-based killings. Because James Chaney was an African American and a Christian, and Goodman and Schwerner were both white and Jewish, the three young men were murdered while investigating the firebombing of an African American church. Many of today's Mississippians say they feel that the unpunished Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner murders give their state a racist reputation.
But Ben Chaney, the younger brother of James, thinks that some of the people behind the new push to solve the 1964 murders may want to clean up the state's reputation by deceptive means.
James E. Prince III, the grandson of the former head of the White Citizen's Council, is currently publisher and editor of the Neshoba Democrat newspaper. Ben, who directs the James Earl Chaney Foundation, said that it appears as if Prince is using his new local citizens group, the Philadelphia Coalition, to go after only the most virulent racists who took part in the murders - former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers and Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen, the man said to have been the "main instigator" of the murders, who told the other Klansmen where to hide in order to capture the three young men, what to do with them once they'd been captured, and where to bury their bodies.
Convictions of Bowers and Killen could be used to promote the idea that racism no longer exists in Neshoba County, Chaney contends. But if there are to be convictions for the 1964 murders, Ben says his family would only support efforts to convict each of the still nine to ten living murderers. The problem is that some of those murderers went on to high stations in Mississippi society, and Chaney thinks that those murderers, as politically connected racists, would most likely be protected from prosecution.
"This is their desire to separate their group from the Klan," Chaney said. "They're promoting this image as if they're trying to seek justice, while in fact their true agenda is something else. "They're going to say they're seeking justice, but that's no justice there - even I know better than that. They're playing a very vicious game here; they're seriously playing a game!"
(Whole thing.)
Ben Greenberg’s Blog
Folks I’ve got them hungry blues
And nothin’ in this to lose
People tellin’ me to choose
Between dyin’ and lyin’ and keep
on cryin’
Tired of them hungry blues
Listen ain’t you heard the news
There’s another thing to choose
A brand new world clean and fine
Where nobody’s hungry
And there’s no color line
A thing like that’s worth
anybody dyin’
I ain’t got a thing to lose
But them doggone hungry blues
James P. Johnson
Langston Hughes
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Quite simply, Mississippi’s murdering past is not going to fade away. Here’s just one tiny example of why:
Last evening as I was doing some follow-up research, looking for additional information on the relationship of Guy Banister (remember Jim Garrison?) and Senator Eastland, and Jack Childs (the key FBI informant behind the taping of Dr. Martin Luther King) it ended up that Jack Childs has a file in the Sovereignty Commission files (SCR ID # 2-62-1-107-14-1-1).
Jack Child’s name had shown up in an address book of Aaron Henry’s that was apparently stolen from Aaron Henry and copied into the Commission files. But right above Jack Childs’ file was another one for J. A. Childs (SCR ID # 10-70-0-2-1-1-1). Could this be a second file on Jack?
The second Mr. Childs was someone else, the employer of an unfortunate black man, Mr. Booker T. Mixon of Itta Bena, who was dragged behind a car near Marks (Quitman County) in 1959. This “auto accident” was not investigated and no autopsy was done even though Mr. Mixon’s totally nude body showed “abrasions, cuts and contusions.” He remained in a coma in the Clarksdale hospital from Oct. 12 until Oct. 23 when he died “without uttering a word.”
No.. this history is not going to fade just because one old man is found guilty in 2005. Too many old black people keep their own lists of all of the other thousands of people who were lynched or who “disappeared” in Mississippi over the years. Further, the Sovereignty Commission files are filled with names such as Mr. Mixon’s, and sometimes, when the stars are right, the names of these murder victims shimmer through, if only for a moment in the early morning hours.
Susan