- Person
- Michael Schwerner
- Lived
- 1939–1964
- Field
- Civil rights
- From
- American
The story
In the early 1960s Mississippi kept almost all of its Black citizens away from the ballot box. A state constitution passed in 1890, backed by literacy tests that white registrars judged as they pleased, had done its work so well that in 1962 only about 6.7 per cent of eligible Black voters in the state were registered. Civil rights groups saw Mississippi as the hardest place in the country to change.
Michael Schwerner, a 24-year-old social worker from New York who led a local branch of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) on the Lower East Side, wanted to go there. In his application to national CORE he wrote, "I have an emotional need to offer my services in the South," and said he hoped to spend the rest of his life working for an integrated society. CORE hired him as a field worker, and on 15 January 1964 he and his wife Rita left New York in their Volkswagen Beetle for Mississippi.
After meeting the civil rights leader Bob Moses in Jackson, Schwerner was sent to Meridian, the largest city in eastern Mississippi, to organise a community centre and other programmes. He and Rita worked under CORE's state director, Dave Dennis, and became the first white workers CORE assigned to work permanently outside the state capital. His pay was $9.80 a week, and the couple lived on very little as they built up the work.
In Meridian Schwerner set up a centre for Black residents, organised a boycott that won a local store's first Black employee, went door to door to talk with white working-class families, and pressed hard on voter registration. A local young man, James Chaney, joined him and became his closest co-worker.
The work was dangerous. He faced hate mail, threatening phone calls and police harassment. Yet after a few months he was sure he had made the right decision. Nowhere, he said, was the idea of white supremacy more firmly entrenched than in Mississippi, and he described the state as "the decisive battleground for America".
That judgement proved right. The groundwork laid by Schwerner and others led into Freedom Summer, when more than 1,000 volunteers joined Black Mississippians in registration drives. After the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the share of Black adults registered in Mississippi rose from 6.7 per cent in 1964 to 66.5 per cent in 1969.
Why it matters
By living and working in Meridian for almost nothing, Schwerner helped bring the voter registration movement into parts of Mississippi that civil rights groups had barely reached.
About Michael Schwerner
New York social worker who organised Black voter registration in Mississippi for CORE and was murdered by the Klan with James Chaney and Andrew Goodman in 1964.
More about Michael Schwerner
- Michael Schwerner helped integrate Gwynn Oak ParkIn 1963 Michael Schwerner took part in the campaign to desegregate Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Maryland, which had kept a whites-only admissions policy for decades.
- Michael Schwerner opened his fraternity to a Black studentAs a student at Cornell, Michael Schwerner campaigned successfully for his fraternity to accept a Black student as a pledge, an early sign of his commitment to equality.
- Michael Schwerner's boycott won a store's first Black hireIn Meridian, Michael Schwerner organised a boycott of a variety store that sold mostly to Black customers until it hired its first African American employee.
- Michael Schwerner planned a Freedom School at Mount ZionOn Memorial Day 1964 Michael Schwerner and James Chaney asked Mount Zion church in Longdale, Mississippi, to host a Freedom School and urged its members to register to vote.
- Michael Schwerner helped win the Voting Rights ActNational outrage at the 1964 killing of Michael Schwerner and fellow activists James Chaney and Andrew Goodman helped Congress pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- Michael Schwerner built a community centre in MeridianMichael and Rita Schwerner took over CORE's Meridian field office in 1964 and set up a community centre for Black residents as a base for grassroots organising.
- Michael Schwerner protected a bullied boy, Robert ReichAs a boy Michael Schwerner protected the young Robert Reich from bullies; Reich, later US Secretary of Labor, said it inspired him to protect the powerless.
- Michael Schwerner worked with youth on the Lower East SideMichael Schwerner left graduate school to work as a social worker in a Lower East Side housing project, where he was known for his special rapport with teenagers.
Sources
- Michael Schwerner Famous Trials, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law (archived)
- Michael Schwerner Wikipedia
- Freedom Summer Wikipedia
- Voting Rights Act of 1965 Wikipedia
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