Louise H. Stanford, 62; Sounded Alarm in 1964 Civil Rights Slayings
Louise Hermey Stanford, 62, the volunteer who sounded the alarm when three civil rights workers disappeared in Mississippi in 1964, died of complications of breast cancer Oct. 18 in Lampasas, Texas.
The slayings of the civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, shocked the nation. The events were dramatized in the 1988 motion picture “Mississippi Burning.”
After she was diagnosed with cancer, Stanford had feared that she wouldn’t live to see the perpetrator go to trial. But on June 21 of this year -- 41 years after the deaths of the three young men -- Edgar Ray Killen was convicted on three counts of manslaughter in the case.
A New Jersey native, Stanford earned a degree in political studies at Drew University. She also attended theological school.
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