Monday, February 08, 1999

Monument sought for slain civil rights workers

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BY RANDY McNUTT
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Rick Momeyer, now a Miami professor, trained civil rights workers as part of the Mississippi Summer Project near this Oxford site in 1964. (Gary Landers photo) | ZOOM |

        OXFORD — The three were dead; everyone sensed it. Anticipation blew like dark leaves across the green campus. Still, no news.

        After training with the Mississippi Summer Project at Oxford's Western College in June 1964, Andrew Goodman, 20, James Chaney, 21, and Michael Schwerner, 21, had driven South to register blacks to vote. Within days, they vanished into the night.

        “There was virtually no one at the training sessions who was not convinced that Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were dead,” said Richard “Rick” Momeyer, a Summer Project trainer who now teaches philosophy at Miami University. “In 1964, civil rights workers workers did not just disappear in the Deep South and then reappear.”

THE VICTIMS

• Andrew Goodman, left, 20, a volunteer from New York City. Attended Queens College, where he majored in anthropology and participated in drama. Met Mr. Schwerner and Mr. Chaney at the summer training session in Oxford. • James Chaney, 21, center, of Meridian, Miss. That's where he began his work with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1963. Tall, thin and athletic. Interested in civil rights from an early age. • Michael “Mickey” Schwerner, right, 21, a professional civil rights worker from Meridian. Graduate of Cornell University, where he majored in sociology. In 1962, married Rita Levant. They went to Mississippi in January 1964 to run CORE's Community Center.

        Today, the murders — committed by Klansmen — are a footnote to American history, but one still remembered in this community of about 20,000 full-time residents and students.

        At 6:30 p.m. today, the city's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) will honor all 800 Summer Project volunteers at the Freedom Fund Dinner in Shriver Center. It is sold out.

        The NAACP also is trying to raise money to erect a monument to the three slain activists. It would be placed on the campus of Western College for Women, now a part of Miami. In 1964, Western was a staging point for civil rights workers heading South.

        “There was so much hope and optimism in Oxford as we were ready to move into Mississippi,” said U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who was chairman of the Southern-based Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. “Then, on June 21, some of those dreams were shattered.”

        The three workers drove to Longdale, Miss., to see a firebombed black church. Along the way police stopped them for a traffic violation, took them to the Neshoba County Jail in Philadelphia, Miss., but released them later that night. On their way back to Meridian, they were abducted by Klan members, shot and buried in a remote earthen dam.

        For 44 days, authorities searched for the men as the nation watched. Acting on an informant's tip, the FBI discovered the bodies.

        Mr. Momeyer, 56, thinks about those days often. Whenever he walks across the old Western College campus, he hears their freedom songs and remembers lying on the spring grass.

        “We trained people how to get beat up and not to get hurt too badly, and how not to strike back,” he said. “It was difficult work. Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman made a direct sacrifice of their very lives in the struggle for equality.”

        Arrival of the Summer Project — and its 800 young people — in Oxford was an historical accident; Berea College in Kentucky was the first choice. When that didn't work out, Western accepted the project.

DONATIONS

To donate money for the monument to honor Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, send checks to: Freedom Summer '64 Fund First National Bank of Southwestern Ohio 25 W. High St. Oxford 45056.

        “We came in two waves,” Mr. Momeyer said. “The first group helped people teach in training schools; the second group helped with community organizing and voter registration. There was a lot of pressure on the volunteers to go home, and I'm sure some people did. Bob Moses, our charismatic leader, urged people to leave if they had any doubts. We talked for hours, and a lot of tears were shed. Those who stayed developed a real solidarity and commitment to what they were doing.

        “One of my more vivid memories is of us marching up to the Western Union office near the water tower in Oxford to send telegrams to Congress and the FBI. We wanted the FBI to investigate the disappearance. The FBI was not sympathetic.”

        Today, the Summer Project and Western College are memories, but Arthur Miller, a NAACP member who's now 77, cannot forget 1964.

        “The students came from all over the country,” said Mr. Miller, who worked at Miami at the time. “Locally, reaction to the project was pro and con. My boss actually told me, "They are nothing but a bunch of beatniks.' I said, "If it takes a bunch of beatniks to straighten things out, I would go along with the beatniks.'

        “Thirty of us formed a group called Friends for the Mississippi Project. We each took the name of a kid, and we gave financial support. Now, we want to build a monument. Its size will depend on how much money we can raise.”

        Mr. Lewis, who knew Mr. Schwerner and met the other men, thinks the monument idea is worthy.

        “These three men gave their lives for all of us to become participants in the democratic process,” he said. “They didn't die in Vietnam or in the Middle East 35 years ago. They died right here in America. Their deaths should never be forgotten. They put their bodies on the line for the cause of freedom.”

        Stephen Schwerner, Michael's brother and a professor at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, wants more.

        “Monuments are nice, but I'm really more interested in what's happening today,” he said. “We have a nation that keeps tearing back at affirmative action...”

        Mr. Schwerner, who was 27 when his brother was killed, said the Ku Klux Klan killed the men because the trio was organizing black people to vote.

        “For weeks it was national news,” he said. “But a lot of other people died in the civil rights movement. Many were indigenous to the South. Most of them will never be known. They are the real heroes of the movement.”

        His brother's murder helped inspire the 1988 film Mississippi Burning, which Mr. Schwerner describes as “a tremendous distortion of history. It makes it look like black people had no power or ability to function by themselves. It makes it look like the FBI was diligently working for civil rights in the South.

        “Actually, the FBI was always in cahoots with local law enforcement. The film shows a black FBI person, which is not accurate. The agency didn't even have any (black agents) there at the time. It shows no strong, no brave blacks. It was a horrendous film.”

        Ben Chaney of New York, who was 12 when his brother was killed, said he does not dwell on the negative.

        “It can never be easy,” he said of the murders. “What has happened is over. We can feel sorry for ourselves and be downtrodden, or we can take the goodness of these three men and use it to help people. That way, the sadness becomes bearable. Once you focus on the energy and love these men had for others, you're getting to where you ought to be.”

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