This morning's
Jackson Clarion-Ledger announces that Mississippi Attorney-General Jim Hood has asked and will get the United States Justice Department's help in re-examining evidence in the murders of James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Henry Schwerner. The inquiry will attempt to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to file new indictments in the murders of the three civil rights workers near Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964. Mississippi never charged anyone with murder. Fifteen people were tried on federal conspiracy charges in 1967. After three mistrials, eight people were acquitted and seven others were found guilty. No one served more than six years in prison on the federal conspiracy charges. At least two key suspects, Sam Bowers and Edgar Ray Killen are still alive. Bowers is currently serving a life sentence in prison for ordering the death of NAACP leader, Vernon Dahmer.
Meanwhile, Veterans of the civil rights movement and others will gather on 20 June at 1:00 p.m. at Mt. Zion Church, 1119 Road 747 in the Longdale Community east of Philadelphia, Neshoba County, Mississippi. They will mark the 40th anniversary of the deaths of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, whose story is briefly told here. Sandra Adicks, D'Army Bailey, Charles Cobb, Connie Curry, Dave Dennis, Tom Hayden, Jan Hilegas, Ed King, Dorie and Joyce Ladner, Jim Loewen, Cynthia McKinney, Bob Moses, Penny Patch, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Jimmy Travis, and Hollis Watkins are among the civil rights veterans who will attend this memorial. Many of them have been calling for the federal and state inquiry into the deaths, which has just been announced.
