Last Friday, Edgar Ray Killen, a 79-year-old, part-time preacher was indicted in Neshoba County Mississippi for a crime which took place 40 years ago and reverberated throughout our nation and shook my small world at Queens College.

Killen pled not guilty to the murder of three voter registration workers who were killed by Klansmen in one of the most notorious crimes in our nation’s history. One of the three murdered civil rights workers was Andrew Goodman, a college classmate of mine, who in 1964 lost his life in Mississippi working to register voters during “Freedom Summer.”

I have previously written about Andy, his cause and his loss in this column - the memory of his murder was a moment in my life that I shall never forget.

Each time, over the past 40 years, the heinous crime is mentioned, it touches me again. It is a story that had become an integral part of this nation’s civil rights folklore. There was the Gene Hackman film “Mississippi Burning,” which told the story of the three civil rights workers and that awful summer. There was Queens College classmate Paul Simon’s song, “He Was My Brother,” which although prophetically written shortly before Goodman’s death, was modified by Simon as a lasting tribute to Andy.
To those of us fortunate enough to know the gentle 20-year old Queens College student, his death will always be part of our consciousness. The Andy Goodman story is now four decades old and I’m not sure what, if anything the indictment of Killen means except to recall to those who were a part of the civil rights movement of the 60’s, the memory of Andy, a giant - a martyr.

I remember going out to lunch with Andy the week of, or the week before, he left for Mississippi. It was a small group of us involved in the civil rights movement at Queens College: Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Student Help Project (SHP) and Freedom Week (a Queens College student-run week of civil rights consciousness and activities). Seven, maybe eight of us, wanted to give Andy a send off and hear his thoughts as he left for “Freedom Summer” in Mississippi. He knew, and we knew, that registering black voters in the nation’s most reactionary state was fraught with danger. The Klu Klux Klan seemed to own Mississippi back then and outsiders were not welcome.
Firebombing, shootings and hangings were frequently the news of the day and the fate of those who crossed the Klan.

We had a need to be with Andy before he left.

Andy Goodman was 20-years-old when he died on Rock Cut Road on Sunday night, June 21,1964 in Neshoba County.

Goodman had arrived in the state early the previous morning after attending a three-day training session in Ohio for volunteers of the Mississippi Summer Project.

His first full day in Mississippi began with CORE social worker Michael Schwerner - whose brother coincidently was a Queens College admissions counselor - and James Chaney, a local black plasterer’s apprentice, and a visit to the burned out remains of Mount Zion Church. They then visited the homes of the four black members of the congregation to learn more about the incident.

Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price spotted their CORE wagon and arrested all three, allegedly for suspicion of having been involved in the church arson and put the three men in Neshoba County jail. When Chaney paid the fine and Price released them from jail, it was the beginning of the end of their young lives.

Price in his car, and two cars full of young Klansmen, followed the CORE wagon. They chased and caught the three and traveled with them down a dirt path named Rock Cut Road. The triggerman, Wayne Roberts, shot Schwerner first, then Goodman, and then Chaney was beaten and like the others shot at point blank range. The bodies of the three civil rights workers were taken to a dam site at the old Jolly Farm, placed together in a hollow at the dam site and then covered with tons of dirt.

On Aug. 4, the bodies were discovered. A team of pathologists who later examined the bodies found that Chaney, an African American and a native of Meridian, Miss., had been beaten so brutally that he was probably dead when Klansmen shot him three times. Schwerner and Goodman died from gunshot wounds.

In 1967, Edgar Ray Killen, Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, triggerman Wayne Roberts and 16 other men were tried by the Justice Department on federal civil rights violations. Seven including Price and Roberts were convicted, while Killen was freed after his trial ended in a hung jury. Both now deceased, Price, served four of his seven-year sentence, Roberts, served ten years.

Up until now, the state of Mississippi has never brought murder charges against anyone in the case. And now forty years later, 79- year-old Edgar Ray Killen sits in jail, in a cell just like Andy Goodman sat 40 years earlier.
And I still can’t make much sense of it all.

Michael Schenkler can be reached via this contact form.