Michael Schwerner Biography
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Michael Schwerner (November 6, 1939 – June
21, 1964), called Mickey by friends and colleagues, was a Jewish CORE
field worker killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, by the Ku Klux Klan in
response to the civil-rights work he coordinated, which included
promoting registration to vote among Mississippi African Americans.
Born and raised in New York, he attended
Michigan State University, originally intending to become a
veterinarian. He transferred to Cornell University, however, and
switched his major to sociology, going on after graduation to the School
of Social Work at Columbia University. While an undergraduate at
Cornell, he integrated a fraternity there.
His passionate dedication to civil rights
made him a marked man in Mississippi, and he had been a long-sought
target of the Klan.
Schwerner's murder occurred near the town
of Philadelphia, Mississippi, where he and fellow workers, James Chaney
and Andrew Goodman were 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 film Mississippi Burning is loosely
based on the murders and ensuing FBI investigation (as is the TV-movie
Attack on Terror), and the events leading up to the deaths of Schwerner,
Goodman and Chaney were dramatised in Murder in Mississippi.
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.
On January 7, 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, an
outspoken white supremacist nicknamed "Preacher," pleaded "Not Guilty"
to Schwerner's murder, but was found guilty of manslaughter on June 21,
2005.
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URL of Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Schwerner
Date Article Copied:
March 17, 2006
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