Michael Schwerner

Schwerner and two co-workers, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, were killed in response to their civil rights work, which included promoting voting registration among African Americans, most of whom had been disenfranchised in the state since 1890.

Born and raised in Pelham, New York, to a family of Jewish heritage, Schwerner attended Pelham Memorial High School.

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 Labor.

Schwerner helped protect Reich, who was smaller, from bullies.

Michael Henry Schwerner (November 6, 1939 – June 21, 1964) was an American civil rights activist.

He was one of three Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) field workers killed in rural Neshoba County, Mississippi, by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

In the early 1960s Schwerner became active in working for civil rights for African Americans; he led a local Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) group on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, called "Downtown CORE."

He participated in a 1963 effort to desegregate Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Maryland.

As activism increased in the South, Schwerner, recruited by John Lewis, and his wife, Rita Schwerner Bender, volunteered to work for National CORE in Mississippi, under the tutelage of Dave Dennis, the CORE state director.

Bob Moses assigned the Schwerners to organize the community center and activities in Meridian.

James Chaney was a local youth who started working with them there.

The Schwerners were the first whites to be assigned by CORE permanently outside the state capital of Jackson.

In the summer of 1964 CORE intended to hold classes and drives to register African Americans to vote in the state, what they called "Freedom Summer".

Many volunteers, mostly college students and young adults, had been recruited from local communities and northern/western states to work on this project.

Civil rights activists were resented and held under suspicion by white Mississippians.

Spies paid by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a taxpayer-funded agency, kept track of all northerners and suspected activists.

The Commission conducted economic boycotts and intimidation against activists.

In 1998 its records were opened by court order, revealing the state's deep complicity in the 1964 murders of three civil right workers because its investigator, A. L. Hopkins, passed on information about the workers, including their car license number, to the Commission.

Records showed the Commission passed the information on to the Sheriff of Neshoba County, Lawrence Rainey, who was implicated in the murders.

The Ku Klux Klan targeted Schwerner after he and his wife, Rita, had taken over the Meridian CORE field office, where they established a community center for blacks as part of grassroots organizing.

Schwerner tried to establish contact with white working-class citizens of Meridian and went door-to-door to speak with them.

He also organized a black boycott of a popular variety store until it hired its first African American, under the principle of "don't shop where you can't work".

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered near the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi.

They were investigating the burning of Mt. Zion Methodist Church, which had been a site of a CORE Freedom School, in a nearby community.

Parishioners had been beaten in the wake of Schwerner and Chaney's voter registration rallies for CORE.

The Sheriff's Deputy, Cecil Price, had been accused by parishioners of stopping their caravan and forcing the deacons to kneel in the headlights of their own cars, while they were beaten with rifle butts.

That same group of white men was identified as having burned the church.

Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price arrested Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner for an alleged traffic violation and took them to the jail in Neshoba County.

They were released that evening, without being allowed to telephone anyone.

On the way back to Meridian, they were stopped by patrol lights and two carloads with members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan on Highway 19, then taken in Price's car to another remote rural road.

One of the Klansmen, Alton Wayne Roberts, reportedly pulled Schwerner out of the car, pointed a gun at his chest, and asked "Are you that nigger lover?".

Schwerner replied "Sir, I know just how you feel," before Roberts shot him in the heart.

Goodman was killed by Roberts in the same manner, while Chaney was killed by either Roberts or James Jordan, after beating, chain-whipping and castrating him.

The men's bodies remained undiscovered for 44 days.