Quixotic

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Quixotic is the latest edition to the Scene series. The book focuses on the United States and includes stories from two roadtrips along with other assorted trysts.

196 pages/Published in 2010

Is The Fire Out Yet?

Mississippi, 2009

  The movie Mississippi Burning, starring Gene Hackman and Willem Defoe, is one of my all-time favorites. While depicting at least the gist of historical events, it contains great acting and a whole host of memorable lines. But while the movie is highly entertaining, it is also quite emotionally draining. Of course the film simply wouldn’t work any other way, as there is absolutely no subtle means of properly portraying the disturbingly senseless violence that descended down upon the sleepy little town of Philadelphia, Mississippi during the summer of 1964. I always favored using the film in conjunction with a book entitled We Are Not Afraid written by Seth Cagin and Philip Dray as supplemental materials when I covered the civil rights movement in my United States Government classes. 

  It was my second time in Mississippi, the first taking place sixteen years earlier in 1993. Then, as now, I have trouble believing such hatred and violence could have taken place in a setting so strikingly bucolic and seemingly innocuous. But then I suppose the same could be said about places like Bosnia or Cambodia. There are no sure bets that pretty countryside will equate to civility. For those unfamiliar with the story, I’ll do my best to provide a brief synopsis of what occurred during that fateful summer of ’64…

  Various advocacy groups were active throughout the South in what became known as “Freedom Summer” which was fundamentally an enthusiastic attempt at securing a wide assortment of civil rights for underprivileged southern Blacks. Voter registration was at the heart of many of the advocacy group’s set of primary objectives, voting rights being a logical first step in unlocking freedom’s front door.

  Voter registration was what brought together three passionate young men in their twenties who sought to make a difference. Unfortunately, sweeping reform in 1964 Mississippi was about as popular as sweeping reform was in 1964 U.S.S.R…That is to say, not very. Mississippian James Chaney and New Yorkers, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goldman, were in Mississippi as part of an organization known as the Congress of Racial Equality, better known as C.O.R.E. The three civil rights activists normally spent much of their time out signing up prospective Black voters, but on that particular sunny Sunday afternoon in June, they had traveled out to a town named Longdale in order to investigate the charred remnants of the Mount Zion United Methodist Church, which had been burned to the ground five days earlier. The three men, temporarily based out of Meridian, Mississippi, were cognizant of the fact that their license plate number had been distributed among various Klan organizations throughout the area in an attempt to keep tabs on their whereabouts and movements. On their way back from the burned out church, which was located some fifty miles away from Meridian, the car the trio had been traveling in was pulled over for speeding on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Mississippi. The speeding charge was bogus as the volunteers knew full well that they had to adhere stringently to all traffic laws in order to avoid sticky, albeit unwarranted, altercations with local law enforcement officials looking for any reason to disrupt the work by “outside agitators”. Nevertheless, Chaney, who was at the wheel of the blue Ford station wagon at the time, was hauled off to jail for allegedly traveling thirty-five miles over the speed limit. Chaney’s two passengers were also detained “for investigation”. Some eight hours later, Schwerner, Goldman, and Chaney were released. By now it was dark and the three men were miles away from their home base in Meridian. To say that they were in enemy territory would be a gross understatement. As they traveled down a pitch-black rural road they were pulled over by Cecil Price, the same Neshoba County deputy whom had arrested them earlier in the day. Although this time, the traffic stop had little to do with bringing anyone to jail for speeding. While the activists had been stewing in jail, Price had been busy contacting Ku Klux Klan members, who in turn had been hatching a hasty assassination stratagem. Price himself was affiliated deeply with the faction. Per plan, Deputy Price detained the activists just long enough for his fellow Klan members to arrive in a separate car. All three young men in the car were shot down; murdered in cold blood. Chaney received the brunt of it however, as he had two strikes against him, being both Black and from Mississippi, both of which didn’t sit well with his tormentors. Chaney sustained numerous broken bones as the result of an atrocious beating before finally being shot to death. All three bodies were buried in a nearby earthen dam with the assistance of a bulldozer. The blue Ford station wagon was set ablaze before being submerged in the Bogue Chitto Swamp.

   The disappearance of the three civil rights workers, which had been monitored closely by C.O.R.E. officials who relied greatly on hourly check-ins, was reported to the authorities and soon became national news. The incident was downplayed by both the police and the politicians within Mississippi. Authorities collectively insisted that the trio was merely playing a childish prank in an attempt to make Mississippi look bad. But despite pleas by Mississippi officials, including Governor Paul Johnson, who was quoted as saying that the three men “could be in Cuba”; the news story rapidly became front-page fodder, soon resulting in national outrage. President Lyndon B. Johnson called on J. Edgar Hoover to send in the F.B.I. to investigate, but Hoover, never one to befriend civil rights activists, dragged his heels. Hoover finally moved to action after a series of direct threats from President Johnson himself. Once the ball finally did get rolling, the government search efforts reached circus-like proportion, as busloads of military personnel and legions of black-suited G-men descended down upon Mississippi en masse. During the search, navy dive teams and federal agents discovered the remains of at least seven other victims, but turned up nothing on Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman. (Read more, buy the book)