Michael Schwerner (1939 - 1964)

Mon Nov 06, 1939

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Image: Photograph of Michael Scwerner with light hair and a goatee, facing the camera

Michael Schwerner, born on this day in 1939, was one of three Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) field/social workers killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

In the early 1960s Schwerner became active in working for civil rights for black people; he led a local Congress of Racial Equality group on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, called “Downtown CORE.” He participated in a 1963 effort to desegregate Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Maryland. As activism increased in the South, Schwerner and his wife Rita Schwerner Bender volunteered to work for National CORE in Mississippi, helping black people exercise their right to vote.

Michael Scwerner and fellow civil rights workers James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were killed near the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi while investigating the burning of Mt. Zion Methodist Church, which had been a site for a CORE Freedom School.

Arrested by the local sheriff, the trio was released that evening without being allowed to contact anyone. On the road, they were stopped by patrol lights and two carloads of KKK members, kidnapped, tortured, and killed.

The sheriff, along with six others, were indicted and convicted for depriving the three men of their civil rights. No one was held accountable for their murders until 2005, when outspoken white supremacist Edgar Ray Killen was convicted on three counts of manslaughter.

  • Pilkins@lemmy.world
    3·
    1 year ago

    This case was the story for the movie Mississippi Burning. Great movie to show just how bad racism was only 60 years ago.