Ben Chaney Was 12

Ben Chaney is the brother of the late James Earl Chaney. Excerpts from Democracy Now! interview by Amy Goodman.

AMY GOODMAN: Ben, at that time, when you were 11, what 10, 11, 12 years old?

BEN CHANEY: Twelve.

AMY GOODMAN: 12 years old. What did you understand? And do you remember the day that your brother's body was found, along with Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner?

BEN CHANEY: Well, the day that the bodies was found, I think, we got – that was at a – I was at a rally at a church in Meridian, and it was in the evening time. And I got a call, I had to come home. And the F.B.I. was there. They was explaining to my mother, they had found three bodies. What I remember most about the entire incident, though, I guess, is just watching my mother during those 44 days. You know, she would tell us stories about her Grandpa Jim, about other members of her family that disappeared, and stories that she told, that she witnessed, the things she witnessed when she was -- since she was four years old. She would walk around the house, always humming, singing spirituals, and clean the house up, you know, from top to bottom, three or four times a day. So the thing that I remember most was the agony and the pain in her eyes. That was probably the saddest thing in the whole period. I didn't have no concept of death until the funeral. I was pretty well protected as a kid, and I just had no real concept of what death was about, until my brother's funeral.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about your brother's funeral.

BEN CHANEY: It was sad. It was sad for me. That wasn't a real funeral, because his body was so badly decomposed and just messed up. So they had a little memorial service that evening, but during that morning they had the burial at the cemetery. And it was when the coffin was being lowered into the ground that I realized that death was final. So it was a pretty sad time in the 1960s.