Three Civil Rights Workers Martyred
by: Dr. Clint Wilson
A benchmark event in the history of the Civil Rights Movement took place in Mississippi when three young men, participating in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) Freedom Summer project, were killed by a Ku Klux Klan mob.
Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were among a thousand mostly white student volunteers who went South to set up “Freedom Schools.” James Chaney was a black civil rights worker from Meridian, Miss. who joined Schwerner and Goodman in efforts to promote a positive sense of black history and identity among black children and to support nonviolence in the struggle for racial equality.
When the three disappeared near Philadelphia, Miss. many feared the worst because the state was notorious for acts of violence against any that would challenge segregationist principles. Before the bodies were found, the Pittsburgh Courier revealed those fears in its Independence Day issue of 1964.
STUDENT RIGHTS GROUPS FEAR FOR LIVES IN MISS. PHILADELPHIA, Miss. – "The possibility of receiving physical harm and even death is always a real and present one."
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1937 – Joe Louis Wins Heavyweight Title Joe Louis, known to the world as the “Brown Bomber,” began his reign of more than a decade as the heavyweight boxing champion of the world with his knockout of James Braddock.
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1867 – An Appeal to Black Californians "Phoenix" societies had long been established on the East Coast to provide social services needed in the black community and a San Francisco newspaper urged their cultivation in California.
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