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James Earl Chaney (May 30, 1943 – June 21,
1964) was a civil rights worker who was murdered (along with Michael
Schwerner and Andrew Goodman) by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Chaney was born in the town of Meridian,
Mississippi. He had joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in
1963, and was age twenty-one when he was killed.
Chaney's murder occurred near the town of
Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Chaney was undertaking field work for
CORE.
The three (Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman)
were initially arrested by Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price for an alleged
traffic violation and taken to the jail in Neshoba County. They were
released that evening and on the way back to Meridian were stopped by
two carloads of KKK members on a remote rural road. The men approached
their car and then shot and killed Schwermer, then Goodman, and finally
Chaney
The circumstances surrounding the death of
the three activists were the subject of the film Mississippi Burning.
On January 7, 2005 Edgar Ray Killen, once
an outspoken white supremacist nicknamed the "Preacher," pleaded "Not
Guilty" to Chaney's murder, but was found guilty of manslaughter on June
20, 2005, and sentenced to sixty years in prison.
On August 4, 1980, Ronald Reagan launched
his presidential election campaign with a speech in Philadelphia,
Mississippi in which he declared his support for states' rights. Some
critics saw his choice of Philadelphia as the launching point for his
campaign as an attempt to further the Republican Party's southern
strategy.
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Date Article Copied:
March 17, 2006
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