- Person
- Michael Schwerner
- Lived
- 1939–1964
- Field
- Civil rights
- From
- American
The story
By 1964 Mississippi had kept most Black citizens from voting for more than seventy years. In 1962 only 6.7 per cent of eligible Black voters in the state were registered, the lowest share in the country. Freedom Summer was launched that June to change this, bringing more than 1,000 out-of-state volunteers to work alongside Black Mississippians on voter registration, Freedom Schools and community centres.
Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were working in that campaign when they were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan on 21 June 1964, after investigating the burning of a Black church in Neshoba County. Chaney was Black; Schwerner and Goodman were Jewish. Their disappearance became the focus of national concern. President Lyndon Johnson met the parents of Goodman and Schwerner in the Oval Office, and on 25 June Walter Cronkite told CBS News viewers it was "the focus of the whole country's concern".
The FBI, local and state authorities and 400 US Navy sailors joined the search. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover opened the bureau's first field office in Mississippi. The three men's bodies were found on 4 August 1964 under an earthen dam. Because the state would not bring murder charges, federal prosecutors charged the killers with civil rights violations, and in 1967 they won convictions of seven men, the first convictions in Mississippi for the killing of a civil rights worker.
Outrage over the murders, together with the Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965, contributed to passage of the Voting Rights Act, which President Johnson signed on 6 August 1965. The law banned literacy tests and similar devices and sent federal examiners to register voters where discrimination had been worst.
Its effect was immediate. Nearly 250,000 Black Americans registered in 1965 alone. In Mississippi the share of Black adults registered to vote rose from 6.7 per cent in 1964 to 66.5 per cent in 1969, and across the former Confederate states the number of Black state legislators grew from 3 in 1965 to 176 in 1985. The US Department of Justice has called the act the most effective piece of federal civil rights legislation ever enacted.
Schwerner did not live to see any of this, but the cause he gave his life for was written into law within fourteen months of his death.
Why it matters
The Voting Rights Act, which Schwerner's sacrifice helped bring about, opened the ballot box to millions of Black Americans who had been kept from voting.
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 went to Mississippi for $9.80 a weekIn January 1964 Michael Schwerner became the first white civil rights worker based permanently outside Jackson, Mississippi, working for CORE in Meridian for $9.80 a week.
- 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 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
- Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner Wikipedia
- Michael Schwerner Wikipedia
- Voting Rights Act of 1965 Wikipedia
- Freedom Summer Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.