This year will mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Civl Rights Act of 1964, and community leaders are using the anniversary to remind residents of the high price paid for their freedoms.
At a commemoration event Friday at First Union Baptist Church, a historic Black church were Martin Luther King Jr. preached during a visit to Meridian, Pastor Odell Hopkins, a faith leader in Meridian’s Black community, said he is old enough to remember getting on the city bus and knowing he could not sit in the front seats. He said he remembers the Ku Klux Klan marching through the streets when the Winn Dixie grocery store hired a Black employee.
While it may seem like the distant past to younger generations, Hopkins said he, and others, remember what life was like before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. They remember, he said, and they will not forget.
“So what did it cost? It cost people not only their safety, but it cost a lot of them their lives,” he said.
Hopkins said the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a win for equality, but it was also legislation. Legislation, he said, can be undone.Angela Lewis, whose father, James Chaney, was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in June 1964 along with Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Neshoba County, said her father was was in Oxford, Ohio, when she was born helping to train volunteers for Mississippi Freedom Summer, a large-scale initiative to register Black Mississippians to vote. He was killed before he had a chance to meet her.
“My dad never saw me, and other than pictures, my eyes have never seen my dad,” she said.
While in Ohio, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner received word of a Black church in Neshoba County being burned and traveled back to Mississippi to investigate. After meeting with the church’s congregation, the three men were stopped for speeding and arrested.
Later released, the three were again stopped on their way out of Neshoba County, abducted and murdered. The disappearance of the three men, and later the discovery of their bodies in an earthen dam, sparked national outrage and served as a catalyst to propel the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through passage.
The landmark legislation, which was initially started by President John F. Kennedy prior to his assassination, was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on July 2, 1964. The bill made it illegal to discriminate against people based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin in public places. It also added extra weight to enforce voting rights and desegregation in schools.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, “is the nation’s benchmark civil rights legislation, and it continues to resonate in America. Passage of the Act ended the application of ‘Jim Crow’ laws, which had been upheld by the Supreme Court in the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the court held that racial segregation purported to be ‘separate but equal’ was constitutional.”
Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman knew from the start their efforts to register Black Mississippians to vote could lead to their deaths, Lewis said. From the beginning, that risk was acknowledged by all who participated in Freedom Summer.
“The students that were in Oxford, Ohio, being trained to come into Mississippi were being trained and told that they may be beat, that they may be jailed and that they may be killed,” she said. “So before the Freedom Summer movement even really began, the deaths happened, but those students still decided to come into Mississippi to work.”
After state prosecutors refused to bring charges in the case, federal officials stepped in, and in a 1967 trial at the federal courthouse in Meridian, seven men were convicted by an all white jury in the deaths of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. None served more than six years.
In 2005, following new evidence uncovered by investigative journalist Jerry Mitchell, a Neshoba County grand jury indicted Edgar Ray Killen on three counts of murder. Former Attorney General Jim Hood prosecuted the case and Killen was convicted of three counts of manslaughter and sentenced to consecutive terms of 20 years for each of the three counts. He died in the state penitentiary in January 2018 at the age of 92.
Following the murders, Lewis said, her grandmother, Chaney’s mother, could not find a job, had her home shot into and had multiple threats made against her life. Eventually, she said her grandmother had to leave the state, moving to New York to start over. Lewis said her grandmother lived long enough to see Killen put in prison for the death of her son more than four decades earlier.
Chaney’s grave, which is now a stop on Meridian’s Civil Rights Trail, has been vandalized so much it needs steel supports to keep it from falling over, Lewis said.
“It’s easy to be angry and to hate, but then we look there’s still so much work we have to do,” she said.
Prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, states implemented poll taxes, Black churches were burned to the ground and people were beaten and killed for trying to cast their votes, Lewis said. And although it may come in a different form, barriers to vote continue to be in place to this day, she said.
“Much of the past has been rebranded, reshaped and renamed and still remains our present state of being,” she said. “Poll taxes, literacy tests, burnings, beatings, lynchings and murders have been rebranded as voter redistricting, purging of names, voter ID laws, and the Voting Rights Act is still being challenged to this day. And sadly, some of those previously violent acts remain in their original forms.”
Judge Veldore Young Graham, a Lauderdale County Youth Court judge and granddaughter of E.F. Young Jr., one of Meridian’s most prominent Black businessmen, said younger generations need to be educated and reminded of the cost that was paid for them to have the ability to vote. It is a dishonor on the sacrifices of the Civil Rights workers that so few people choose to exercise their right to vote, she said.
“See, we played around so long, getting closer and closer to the edge, that now our mindset has changed. It went from, ‘I’ll give it all. I’ll pay the ultimate price,’ to ‘I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. My vote doesn’t count,’” she said. “And now we’re at the point where very few of us are participating in the voting process.”
One vote can make a difference, Young said, and one person working to improve their community can make a lasting impact. Taking time to vote is not only a right, she said, it is an obligation.
“One tree can start a forest. One smile can start a friendship. One star can guide a ship at sea. One candle can wipe out darkness,” she said. “One step can start a journey, and one vote can change a nation.”
'; var element = document.getElementById("sub_message"); element.appendChild(subMessage); console.log("Code Loaded!"); } else { var subMessage = document.createElement('div'); subMessage.id = 'sub-message-top'; subMessage.class = 'panel panel-default'; subMessage.style.backgroundColor = '#eee'; subMessage.style.borderRadius = '5px'; subMessage.style.padding = '10px'; subMessage.style.marginTop = '25px'; subMessage.style.marginBottom = '25px'; subMessage.innerHTML = '
Support local journalism.
Subscribe Today'; var element = document.getElementById("sub_message"); element.appendChild(subMessage); console.log("Code Loaded!"); }}
