James Earl Chaney

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James Earl Chaney

James Earl Chaney (born May 30, 1943 in Meridian, Mississippi , † June 21, 1964 ) was an American civil rights activist of African American descent who was murdered in 1964.

In 2014 he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom .

Early years

James Earl Chaney was the eldest son of Fannie Lee and Ben Chaney, Sr. He had a brother, Ben, and three sisters: Barbara, Janice and Julia. The parents divorced when he was very young.

James attended a Catholic school and took an interest in politics at the age of 15. He held up posters from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and was expelled from school for a week. The school was segregated and the principal feared the reaction of the school's white management.

After school, he did an internship at his father's union.

activism

In 1962, Chaney began to take action: He protested in Tennessee and Mississippi. He participated in nonviolent protests with Ben and joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Meridian.

In the summer of 1964, Chaney took part in the "Freedom Summer" campaign aimed at registering black Americans in Mississippi as voters, which at the time was severely hampered by racist local authorities in the southern states.

assassination

On the morning of June 21, 1964, Chaney left with activists Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner to drive to a church that had been burned down for racist reasons. Followers of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan stopped them on the way there and shot first Schwerner, then Goodman and finally Chaney after they had tortured him. Their bodies were buried in an earth wall.

FBI agents managed to solve the case, but the perpetrators were not charged with murder and therefore received only mild prison sentences. One of the perpetrators, Edgar Ray Killen , was initially acquitted in 1967, but tried again on June 21, 2005 and convicted. His release, after he used a wheelchair to feign poor health, was only ended by a 2007 ruling by the Mississippi Supreme Court. Killen died in the Mississippi State Penitentiary in 2018 .

The murder of the three activists and the subsequent FBI investigation served as a template for the American film Mississippi Burning .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hank Klibanoff: The Lasting Impact of a Civil Rights Icon's Murder. In: Smithsonian Magazine . December 2008, archived from the original on February 10, 2011 ; accessed on June 22, 2019 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Chaney, James Earl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Chaney, James
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American civil rights activist of African American descent who was murdered in 1964
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Meridian (Mississippi)
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1964