Fifty years on, the civil rights act has remade US politics theguardian Lyndon Johnson bartered the Democrats strength in the south for a principle and set a presidential standard not rivalled since On 21 June 1964 three young civil rights activists, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, went to investigate the burning of a black church near Philadelphia, Mississippi. It was the Freedom Summer. Young idealistic and militant whites and blacks from north and south came to the state with the most vicious reputation for racial violence, to register black voters and challenge civil rights abuses. That afternoon, deputy sheriff Cecil Price stopped their car and took them in, ostensibly for a speeding violation. While they were in his custody he alerted local Klan members. When the men were released that night, Klansmen organised by Edgar Ray Killen followed them, murdered them and buried them in a nearby earthen dam. Sixteen years later Ronald Reagan came to Mississippi, fresh from the Republican convention that nominated him as its presidential candidate, and spoke at the Neshoba County Fair, just a few miles away from where the men were killed. He said nothing about civil rights, the three who perished nearby or their open murder case, for which no one had been convicted, even though most in the town knew the culprit (Hell, the Klan was boasting about it, Buford Posey, who once lived there, told me. Killen was finally convicted in 2005.)
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 20:01:21 +0000
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