- Person
- Michael Schwerner
- Lived
- 1939–1964
- Field
- Civil rights
- From
- American
The story
Michael Schwerner grew up in Pelham, New York, studied rural sociology at Cornell University, and after graduating enrolled in graduate studies at Columbia University's School of Social Work. He soon left to take a job as a social worker in a housing project on New York's Lower East Side.
By all accounts he was a gifted social worker with a special rapport with teenagers. Friends described him as friendly, good-natured and mischievous, and he believed that all people were essentially good. Those qualities helped him win the trust of young people who were often overlooked.
At the same time he threw himself into the civil rights movement in the city. In the early 1960s he led a local branch of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) on the Lower East Side, known as "Downtown CORE". In 1963 he took part in the campaign to desegregate Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Maryland, which ended that August when the park opened to all. He married Rita Levant, then an education student at Queens College, who shared his commitment.
His dedication deepened in 1963 after he watched the violence in Birmingham, Alabama. He applied to national CORE asking to be posted in the South, writing that he had an emotional need to offer his services there and that he hoped to spend the rest of his life working for an integrated society.
CORE sent him and Rita to Meridian, Mississippi, in January 1964 for $9.80 a week. There the skills he had learned on the Lower East Side, listening to people, earning the confidence of the young and building programmes from the ground up, shaped his work. He set up a community centre for Black residents, and his closest co-worker became a young local man, James Chaney. In June 1964 Schwerner, Chaney and Andrew Goodman were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Schwerner's path from youth work in public housing to voting rights organising is a reminder that many leaders of the civil rights movement learned their craft in neighbourhood service. His story shows how care for individuals, one teenager at a time, can grow into work for justice on a national scale.
Why it matters
Schwerner's work with young people in public housing and his leadership in Downtown CORE prepared him for the grassroots organising he later carried out in Mississippi.
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 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.
Sources
- Michael Schwerner Famous Trials, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law (archived)
- Michael Schwerner Wikipedia
- Gwynn Oak Amusement Park Wikipedia
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