The Summer of ’64

On the afternoon of June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers--Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney--were arrested for speeding outside Philadelphia, Miss. Released later that night, they were pursued and captured by Deputy Cecil Price and several carloads of Ku Klux Klansmen. The Klan took them to a deserted dirt road and executed them. Schwerner and Goodman were shot in the heart by Klansman Wayne Roberts, a former Meridian, Miss., high school football hero. Another Klansman, James Jordan, shot Chaney in the abdomen. “Well, you didn’t leave me nothing but a nigger,” Jordan was quoted as saying during trial testimony, “But at least I killed me a nigger.”

The bodies, buried at a dam site on a nearby farm, were found two months later. On Dec. 4, Federal agents arrested 19 Klansmen and charged them with conspiring to deprive their victims of their civil rights. (According to a newly published history, “We Are Not Afraid: The Story of the Civil Rights Campaign For Mississippi,” the Klansmen were never prosecuted for murder. Murder charges would have been a state matter--and FBI investigators alleged that state officials had little eagerness to pursue the issue.)

After nearly three years of obstruction and delays, which forced the Justice Department to seek a U.S. Supreme Court ruling supporting its case, the conspirators were indicted by a federal grand jury. A trial ensued and on Oct. 19, 1967, the jury found Price and six other conspirators guilty. The convictions marked the first time a jury had ruled against Klan crimes against blacks or civil rights workers in the history of Mississippi. Price was sentenced to six years in prison. Triggerman Roberts and Klan Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers received 10-year sentences.

The conspirators were all paroled before serving their full terms. Most returned to live in the area. Price had a job as a surveyor, Roberts worked on an auto sales lot and Bowers resumed managing the Sambo Amusement Co., his vending machine company. James Chaney’s grave can be found in a tiny black cemetery outside Meridian. His gravestone was stolen twice by vandals. A concrete slab now marks the spot, with Chaney’s name hand-etched in the cement.