Meridian Core

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Lore & Background

Schwerner was born in Pelham, New York, on November 6, 1939, to a Jewish family. He attended Pelham Memorial High School. His mother, Anne Siegel, was a science teacher at New Rochelle High School, and his father, Nathan Schwerner, was a businessman. Schwerner was called Mickey by his friends. He attended Michigan State University, originally intending to become a veterinarian, then 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. 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. Recruited by John Lewis, Schwerner 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." 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."

In Their Own Story

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 on Highway 19, by patrol lights and two cars filled with members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. They were 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 being beaten, chain-whipped, and castrated. The men's bodies remained undiscovered for 44 days. Schwerner's widow Rita expressed indignation publicly at the way the story was handled. She said she believed that if only Chaney (who was black) was missing and the two white men from New York had not been killed along with him, the case would not have received nearly as much national attention, as other black civil rights workers had earlier been killed in the South. On January 7, 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, an outspoken white supremacist nicknamed "Preacher," pleaded "Not Guilty" to state charges of the murders of the three men. The jury found him guilty of three counts of manslaughter on June 21, 2005. He was the only man charged with homicide in connection to the killings. Killen was sentenced to sixty years in prison—twenty years for each count, served consecutively. Killen died in prison in 2018, aged 93.

Reader's Guide

Schwerner "was described by family and friends as friendly, good-natured, gentle, mischievous, and 'full of life and ideas'. He believed all people were essentially good. He loved sports, animals, poker, W.C. Fields, and rock music." Robert Reich says that as a child, he was bullied, and sought out the protection of older boys; one of them was Michael Schwerner. Reich cites this event as an inspiration to "fight the bullies, to protect the powerless, to make sure that the people without a voice have a voice." In 2008, Schwerner's hometown of Pelham, New York, renamed a section of Harmon Avenue as "Michael Schwerner Way" in his honor. Schwerner, along with Goodman and Chaney, received a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2014.

Did You Know?

• Schwerner was called Mickey by his friends.
• As a boy, Schwerner befriended Robert Reich, who later became U.S. Secretary of Labor, and helped protect him from bullies.
• Schwerner 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'.
• When asked by a Klansman 'Are you that nigger lover?', Schwerner replied 'Sir, I know just how you feel,' before being shot in the heart.
• Schwerner's body remained undiscovered for 44 days.