Existing comment:
Murdered in Mississippi
James Chaney:
Born into poverty in Meridian, Miss., James Chaney's activism was ignited when he was suspended from his segregated high school for wearing an NAACP button. A participant in the Freedom Rides, he also worked on voter registration drives. He died less than a month after he turned 21.
Andrew Goodman:
Andrew Goodman was an idealistic student from New York who once took a bus to Appalachia for a high school report on impoverished coal miners. Goodman, 20, joined the Freedom Summer campaign after hearing civil rights leaders speak at his college. "I'm scared," he told a friend, "but I'm going."
Michael Schwerner:
Stirred by the deadly Birmingham, Ala., church bombing. New York social worker Michael Schwerner, 24, and his wife, Rita, moved to Mississippi in January 1964 to work for the Congress of Racial Equality. Schwerner vowed to spend his life fighting segregation. Ku Klux Klan members nicknamed him "Goatee" and targeted him to be killed. |