Michael Schwerner

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Michael Schwerner in an FBI photo

Michael Schwerner (born November 6, 1939 - June 21, 1964 ) was an American civil rights activist and social worker who was murdered in 1964.

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

Early years

Schwerner came from a Jewish family and attended Pelham Memorial High School in Pelham , New York. He was nicknamed Mickey by friends and colleagues. His mother was a science teacher at New Rochelle High School and his father was a businessman. Schwerner later attended Michigan State University and wanted to be a veterinarian.

But then he went to Cornell University , where he began studying sociology. He joined the Alpha Epsilon Pi Association . He later went to Columbia University .

As a child he was friends with Robert Reich , who later became US Secretary of Labor .

activist

He led a Congress of Racial Equality group on the Lower East Side, Manhattan. In 1963, he took part in a desegregation protest at Gwynn Oak Amusement Park , Maryland. The situation in the southern states meant that Schwerner wanted to work with his wife Rita in the section of the National CORE in Mississippi. There he worked with Dave Dennis, the Mississippi director of CORE.

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

assassination

On the morning of June 21, 1964, Schwerner set out with activists Andrew Goodman and James Earl Chaney to drive to a church that had been burned down for racist motives. 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. 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; Nevertheless, he was released, a verdict against it was not upheld until 2007 by Mississippi's highest 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 - The Root of Hate .

Honors

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Javier Panzar: Transcript: Robert Reich's speech at Occupy Cal. In: The Daily Californian. November 18, 2011, accessed June 22, 2019 .
  2. ^ Michael H. Schwerner '6J Possessed Strong Desire for Integrated Society. In: The Cornell Daily Sun. 81/4, September 23, 1964, p. 6 , accessed June 22, 2019 (English).
  3. ↑ Patrick Gavin: Answer This: Robert Reich. In: Politico . July 30, 2012, accessed June 22, 2019 .
  4. ^ Section of Harmon Avenue Dedicated as. In: pelhamplus.com. June 13, 2008, archived from the original on June 30, 2013 ; accessed on June 22, 2019 (English).
  5. ^ President Obama Names Recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In: obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. November 10, 2014, accessed June 22, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Schwerner, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American civil rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH November 6, 1939
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1964