IN MEMORIUM

Just a note to remember three brave boys who tried to help people register to vote in the United States of America. 58 years ago today and practically seven months to the day after President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Once again it appears that voting has become a problem in the United States of America.

On the 21^st June 1964 three Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) civil rights workers were killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, USA:

Michael Henry Schwerner attended Pelham Memorial High School in Pelham New York. He was called Mickey by his friends. His mother, Anne Siegel (May 1, 1912 – November 29, 1996), was a science teacher at nearby New Rochelle High School, and his father, Nathan Schwerner (June 19, 1909 – March 6, 1991), was a businessman. Schwerner attended Michigan State University, originally intending to become a veterinarian. He transferred to Cornell University and switched his major to rural sociology. While an undergraduate at Cornell, he was initiated into the school's chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. He entered graduate school at the School of Social Work at Columbia University..

As a boy, Schwerner befriended Robert Reich, who later became U.S. Secretary of Labour. Schwerner helped protect Reich, who was smaller, from bullies.

James Chaney was born the eldest son of Fannie Lee and Ben Chaney, Sr. His brother Ben was nine years younger, born in 1952. He also had three sisters, Barbara, Janice, and Julia. His parents separated for a time when James was young.

James attended Catholic school for the first nine grades, and was a member of St Joseph Catholic Church.

At the age of 15 as a high school student, he and some of his classmates began wearing paper badges reading “NAACP”, to mark their support for the national civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People founded in 1909. They were suspended for a week from the segregated high school, because the principal feared the reaction of the all-white school board. After high school, Chaney started as a plasterer's apprentice in a trade union.

In 1962, Chaney participated in a Freedom Rode from Tennessee to Greenville Mississippi, and in another from Greenville to Meridian. He and his younger brother participated in other non-violent demonstrations, as well. James Chaney started volunteering in late 1963, and joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Meridian. He organized voter education classes, introduced CORE workers to local church leaders, and helped CORE workers get around the counties.

In 1964, he met with leaders of the Mt. Nebo Baptist Church to gain their support for letting Michael Schwerner, CORE's local leader, come to address the church members, to encourage them to use the church for voter education and registration. Chaney also acted as a liaison with other CORE members.

Andrew Goodman was born and raised in the Upper West Side of New York City, at 161 West 86 Street. He was the second of three boys born of Robert and Carolyn Goodman, and, like fellow murdered activist Michael Schwerner, was Jewish. His family and community were steeped in intellectual and socially progressive activism and were devoted to social justice. An activist at an early age, Goodman graduated from the progressive Walden School, which was said to have had a strongly formative influence on his outlook. He attended the Honours Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a semester but withdrew after falling ill with pneumonia.

Goodman then enrolled at Queens College, New York City, where he was a friend and classmate of Paul Simon. With Goodman's brief experience as an Off-Broadway actor, he originally planned to study drama but switched to anthropology. Goodman's growing interest in anthropology seemed to parallel his increasing political seriousness.

In 1964, Goodman, recruited by John Lewis volunteered along with fellow activists Michael Schwerner, his wife Rita Schwerner Bender, and James Chaney to work on the "Freedom Summer" project of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to register black people to vote in Mississippi. Having protested U.S. President Lyndon Johnson’s presence at the opening of that year's World’s Fare, Goodman left New York to train and develop civil rights strategies at Western College for Women (now part of Miami University) in Oxford, Ohio. In mid-June, Goodman joined Schwerner in Meridian, Mississippi, where the latter was designated head of the field office. They worked in rural areas on registering blacks to vote.