James Chaney
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- See also: Mississippi civil rights workers murders
James Earl "J.E." Chaney (May 30, 1943 – June 21, 1964) was one of three American civil rights workers who was murdered during Freedom Summer by members of the Ku Klux Klan near Philadelphia, Mississippi. He is portrayed in the movie Mississippi Burning by actor Christopher White as a character only identified as "Black Passenger" in the film credits.
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[edit] Biography
Chaney was born in the town of Meridian, Mississippi and was the eldest son in a family of five children. He had one brother, Ben Chaney. His mother was Fannie Lee Chaney, who died in May 2007 but lived long enough to see one of his killers convicted of manslaughter when the case was reopened. His father worked as a plasterer, and his parents separated when Chaney was in his teens. [1]
As a young man, Chaney became a civil rights activist, joining the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1963 to work on voter education and registration. Mississippi laws and practices had disfranchised most black voters since 1890. The state was hostile to integration and civil rights activism, with the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission's paying spies to compile lists of citizens suspected of any kind of involvement. They also tracked all northerners who entered the state to work on civil rights. During Freedom Summer in 1964, Chaney worked with an interracial team, including New Yorkan Jewish-Americans Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, to organize a community center in Meridian and to register African Americans for voting. He was so helpful that Schwerner recommended him for a paid staff position.[2]
Chaney was murdered near the town of Philadelphia. Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner had been visiting parishioners of a black church that had been burned down after being designated a site for a CORE Freedom School. The three civil rights workers (Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman) were arrested by Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price for an alleged traffic violation and taken to the jail in Neshoba County. They were released that evening and disappeared before reaching Meridian. It took two months before their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam.[3]
Chaney was buried at Okatibee Cemetery, by Okatibee Baptist Church, near Meridian, Mississippi.[4]
[edit] First Trial
The FBI had entered the investigation, and paid informants for information leading to the bodies. The US government prosecuted the case as a conspiracy to deprive the men of their civil rights under the Force Act of 1870. When the US government prosecuted the murders, it won conviction of seven men, including Deputy Sheriff Price. Three defendants were acquitted.
[edit] Reinvestigation of murders
Journalist Jerry Mitchell, an award-winning investigative reporter for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, had written extensively about the case for many years. Mitchell had earned renown for helping secure convictions in several other high profile Civil Rights Era murder cases, including the assassination of Medgar Evers, the Birmingham church bombings and the murder of Vernon Dahmer. He developed new evidence about the civil rights murders, found new witnesses, and pressured the State to take action.
Barry Bradford, an Illinois high school teacher, and three students: Allison Nichols, Sarah Siegel, and Brittany Saltiel, joined Mitchell's efforts. They created a documentary about their work. Their documentary, produced for the National History Day contest, presented important new evidence and compelling reasons for reopening the case. They also obtained an interview with Edgar Ray Killen, which helped convince the State to reinvestigate.
In addition, Mitchell determined the identity of "Mr. X", the mystery informer who had helped the FBI discover the bodies and smash the conspiracy of the Klan in 1964. In part Mitchell used evidence developed by Bradford and his students.
When the trial opened on January 7, 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, once an outspoken white supremacist nicknamed the "Preacher," pleaded "Not Guilty" to Chaney's murder. Fannie Lee Chaney and Carolyn Goodman, mothers of two of the civil rights workers, were the last witnesses for the prosecution. The jury found Killen guilty of manslaughter on June 20, 2005, and he was sentenced to 60 years in prison.
[edit] Popular culture
- Meridian (1976, a novel by Alice Walker, dealt with issues of the civil rights era.
- The 1988 film, Mississippi Burning, was loosely based upon these events.
- The circumstances surrounding the deaths of the activists were the subject of the 1990 TV movie Murder in Mississippi, which featured Blair Underwood as James Chaney.
[edit] External links
- The Movement That Reopened The Case
- Biography of James Chaney, University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School
- James Earl Chaney Foundation
- CNN article on Killen plea
- James Chaney's Gravesite
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