USA Today reports that the FBI Field Office in Jackson, Mississippi may soon be named after James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman—the three civil rights workers murdered by Klansmen in Neshoba County, MS, June 21, 1964.
JACKSON, Miss. — This state, whose civil rights history is marred with negatives, wants to name its new Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters after slain civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.
“Given our state and its history, it would do a lot to show that Mississippi has changed,” said U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat.
“I think it’s an excellent idea and one that I would support,” Thompson said.
The Jackson City Council will vote today on a resolution supporting the move. Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman were killed June 21, 1964, while participating in Freedom Summer, an intensive voter registration drive aimed at breaking Mississippi’s resistance to civil rights for African Americans….
“It could send a signal to the rest of the nation that we at least understand some of the things that have happened in the past and realize that this is in tune of correcting some of the negatives back then,” Smith said.
FBI spokeswoman Deborah Madden said the agency will defer to Congress for a final decision on naming the building, which the federal government is leasing….
Angela Lewis, Chaney’s daughter, said naming the building after the trio would be “a very nice gesture” that could contribute to a better understanding of the era.
I’m ambivalent about this possibility of a Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman FBI Field Office. In 1964, when the field office was established, attention to the three murdered civil rights workers precluded attention to most other of the numerous incidents that warranted investigation and response. In his book Racial Matters: The FBI’s Secret File on Black America, 1960-72, historian Kenneth O’Reilly writes:
The reason for skepticism about the FBI presence was obvious. The violence had not abated. By COFO’s estimate 450 incidents makred the three months beginning June 15. Segregationists three voter registration workers in Hattiesburg as Hoover made his speech [at the opening of the Jackson Field Office]. (171)
Despite enormous resources expended by the Bureau on solving the Neshoba murders, there was much skepticism about that as well. As Dick Gregory remarked at the time:
If these Mississippi white Klansmen, who do not know how to plan crimes, who are ignorant, illiterate bastards, can completely baffle our FBI, what are those brilliant Communist spies doing to us?
Though Edgar Ray Killen was finally convicted in 2005 on manslaughter charges for his role in the murders, the case is far from resolved.
The FBI has been been trying to set a different tone in the present day, but questions remain about what the Bureau will accomplish.
It is meaningful that US Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who is a Mississippi Civil Rights Movement veteran, as well as the Mississippi NAACP and James Chaney’s daughter Angela, support the name change. It is worth noting, however, that journalist Chris Joyner has no quotes from Ben Chaney, brother of James Chaney, Rita Schwerner-Bender, widow of Michael Schwerner, or David Goodman, brother of Andrew Goodman. All three regularly make public statements regarding the Neshoba murders and are outspoken advocates for a broad approach to justice for their murdered family members—and for the countless other victims, many still nameless to the world at large.
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on December 29, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Congratulations to Jerry Mitchell!
Jerry Mitchell at the Crimes of the Civil Rights Era conference, Northeastern University Law School, April 28, 2007
A papermaker dedicated to preserving traditional Western and Japanese techniques; a scientist developing theories of global climate change; and a journalist who helps uncover details of unsolved murders from the civil rights era are among the 24 recipients of the $500,000 “genius awards,” to be announced on Tuesday by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation….
Jerry Mitchell, an investigative reporter at The Clarion-Ledger newspaper in Jackson, Miss., who focuses on cold-case murders from the civil rights era, said he would use the money to help write a book on the subject. “I never in all my life expected this,” Mr. Mitchell, 50, said of his award.
I have been following Jerry’s work almost as long as I’ve had this blog and more recently have had the honor and pleasure of getting to know him professionally. Here’s a bit more about him for those unfamiliar:
He has been called “a loose cannon,” “a pain in the ass” and “a white traitor.” Whatever he’s been called, Jerry Mitchell has never given up in his quest to bring unpunished killers to justice, prompting one colleague to call him “the South’s Simon Wiesenthal.”
Since 1989, the 47-year-old investigative reporter for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., has unearthed documents, cajoled suspects and witnesses, and quietly pursued evidence in the nation’s notorious killings from the civil rights era.
His work so far has helped put four Klansmen behind bars: Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 assassination of NAACP leader Medgar Evers, Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers for ordering the fatal firebombing of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer in 1966, Bobby Cherry for the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four girls and, most recently, Edgar Ray Killen, for helping orchestrate the June 21, 1964, killings of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.
So far in 2006, Mitchell has been named a Pulitzer Prize finalist, the winner of the George Polk Award for Justice Reporting, the winner of the Vernon Jarrett Award for Investigative Reporting and the Tom Renner Award for Crime Reporting from Investigative Reporters and Editors. Last November, Mitchell became youngest recipient ever of Columbia University’s John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism for his 17 years of pursuing justice.
David Halberstam said in helping bestow the Chancellor award, “Mitchell pursued these stories after most people believed they belonged to history, and not to journalism. But they did belong to journalism, because the truth had never been told and justice had never been done.”
In 1989, Mitchell was a court reporter for The Clarion-Ledger when the film Mississippi Burning inspired him to look into old civil rights cases that many thought had long since turned cold. Through dogged reporting, which cut across the grain of his paper and many of its readers, he investigated leads long ignored or overlooked.
For example, Mitchell’s diligent attention to detail unraveled the alibi of Cherry, who claimed he was watching wrestling on television when the bomb was planted inside the Birmingham church. Mitchell had the newspaper’s librarian check the TV schedule in the old issues of the Birmingham News. There was no wrestling program on at the time.
His work inspired others. Since 1989, authorities in Mississippi and six other states have reexamined 29 killings from the civil rights era and made 27 arrests, leading to 22 convictions.
“It is fair to say that without Mitchell’s dogged and often courageous reporting … many murders from the civil rights era would have remained unvindicated, locked forever in the vaults of regional amnesia,” wrote Tribune syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker.
(Read more.)
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on September 21, 2009 at 11:49 pm
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