$100,000 reward offered in 1964 civil rights murders
Wednesday, December 22, 2004 at 08:24PM
TheSpook
An anonymous donor has posted a $100,000 reward for information leading
to murder charges in one of the most notorious crimes of the civil
rights era -- the ''Freedom Summer" slayings of three civil rights
workers in 1964. The reward will be administered by an interfaith
organization as the state renews efforts to bring charges in the
killings of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman.
''There are people who have been harboring some of this information for
a long time. There was a lot of common knowledge about this," said the
Rev. James White, treasurer of the Mississippi Religious Leadership
Conference, which is overseeing the reward money. In 1964, the three
volunteers helping to register black voters were murdered on a lonely
dirt road as they drove to a church to investigate a fire. They were
allegedly stopped by Klansmen, beaten, and shot to death. Several weeks
later, their bodies were found buried in a dam a few miles from the
church. Nineteen men, many of them Klansmen, were indicted. Seven were
convicted of federal civil rights violations and sentenced to prison
terms ranging from three to 10 years. But the state never brought
murder charges, and none of the men convicted served more than six
years. [more]
Article originally appeared on (http://brownwatch.com/).
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