“Blowin’ in the Wind:” How many anniversaries will it take?

This June 21st was the sixty-first anniversary of the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Their lives were brutally taken at the outset of Freedom Summer, the 1964 campaign to register Black voters and run Freedom Schools in Mississippi. Their legacy has been to inform us in the perpetual human quest to gain and protect freedom for us all.

In this excerpt from The FOG MACHINE, Zach has brought his students outside, hoping for a break not only from the heat but also the mood in his classroom as everyone continues to reel from the news.

Zach tugged at his shirt where it clung to his sweaty skin. The laughter of some of the younger Meridian Freedom School students wound its way around the building from the playground. He envied those on the swings, managing to get a breeze going on themselves.

It felt like a hundred degrees in the shade, but that record high thus far for 1964 had happened on June 21, the day three fellow volunteers came up missing. James Chaney was from Meridian. Mickey Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were from New York like him. The three had left Meridian to investigate a church bombing in Neshoba County. Zach had been in Ohio then, gathered with the second group of volunteers for orientation. Bob Moses had delivered the news staring, dazed, at his feet: “They haven’t come back, and we haven’t had any word from them.”

It was July now, twenty-three days missing, the haunting new way of telling time. The mosquitoes were at bay, resting up for dusk. Zach had brought his Negro History class outside and gathered them under the broad leafy arms of the huge live oak, away from the other kids. Eleven to seventeen years of age, their faces were bright with desire to learn, or at least commitment to the cause, and their demeanor was at once grateful and expectant. Sometimes the hubbub and enthusiasm inside the three story brick building, now retired as a Baptist seminary school, was too much for him. At those times, he would quietly hum one of his favorite freedom songs—“We Shall Not Be Moved,” “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round,” or “We’ll Never Turn Back,” the ones that spoke of an unshakeable resolve that sometimes deserted him.

When I began writing, I knew precious little about Freedom Summer or these men who gave their lives so that we might all be free. By my novel’s 2014 publication, I thought surely I must know almost as much as anyone who was not an historian or part of the Mississippi Summer Project could know.

But as it turns out, each year since then has offered treasured learning experiences which have deepened that understanding in ways large and small.

Learning in freedom schools was inquiry-based. My experience has been no different, perhaps prompted by this question.

Would I have been as brave as Freedom Summer volunteers?

Have you ever asked yourself whether you would have been as brave as someone you see as heroic?

I’ve lived with that question for a long time now. Throughout the years of researching and writing—and since then, as I’ve prepared for and participated in conversations and events about the times. Wondering whether I would have volunteered for Freedom Summer, my reply vacillating between “perhaps” and “no way.”

For me, the question is mired in fear and the explosion of questions that emotion generates. What has happened? What could happen? What is and is not worth standing up for? How would it feel to stare down the barrel of a rifle, or into the face of hate? …to be beaten, imprisoned? …to confront the gamut from harassment to death?

Participants in the training in Oxford, OH were made keenly aware of the danger they would face if they got on the buses to Mississippi. They were then prepared as well as possible. Some, upon hearing the news that Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner had disappeared, decided not to go. But most did go. Armed with their faith, their sense of social justice, and that “certain something”—especially among ones so young—that makes us all believe that bad things won’t happen to us.

Bob Moses, head of the Freedom Summer project, and John Doar, U.S. attorney general’s office
for civil rights—at one of two weeklong training sessions in Oxford, OH in June 1964—
where Doar warned volunteers of the danger
Credit: Ted Polumbaum / Freedom Forum’s Newseum Collection

Participants in Freedom Summer understood fear in very personal ways.

From Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs, compiled & edited by Guy and Candie Carawan, © 2007:

During gentle mid-June days in 1964, three lives converged in the campus town of Oxford, Ohio, and ended on Rock Cut Road in Neshoba County, Mississippi. Andrew Goodman, a twenty year old Queens College student; James Chaney, a Negro born and raised in Meridian Mississippi; and Michael Schwerner, a New York City social worker. On June 20th the trio arrived in Meridian, but within twenty-four hours they had disappeared. For six tense weeks the search for the three missing civil rights workers went on; on August 4th their bodies were dug out of an earthen dam.

From The Martyrs, Jack Mendelsohn (1966):

“When a memorial service for the three was held next to the charred ruins of the Mt. Zion Methodist Church, Sheriff Rainey and Deputy Price came to watch and listen. Young Ben Chaney gave one of the talks, saying with tears running down his cheeks, ‘I want us all to stand up here together and say just one thing. I want the Sheriff to hear this good. We ain’t scared no more of Sheriff Rainey!’”

Bob Moses speaks in August 1964 during a memorial service for Chaney, Schwerner and
Goodman in the burned ruins of the Mt. Zion Methodist Church in Neshoba County,
Mississippi as Ben Chaney and his mother look on.
Credit: Tamio Wakayama/Take Stock/TopFoto

From Letters from Mississippi (2007):

“Anyone who comes down here and is not afraid I think must be crazy as well as dangerous to this project where security is quite important. But the type of fear that they mean when they, when we, sing ‘we are not afraid’ is the type that immobilizes … The songs help to dissipate the fear. Some of the words in the songs do not hold real meaning on their own, others become rather monotonous … but when they are sung in unison, or sung silently by oneself, they take on new meaning, beyond words or rhythm … There is almost a religious quality about some of these songs, having little to do with the usual concept of a god. It has to do with the miracle that youth has organized to fight hatred and ignorance. It has to do with the holiness of the dignity of man. The god that makes such miracles is the god I do believe in when we sing ‘God is on our side.’ I know I am on that god’s side, and I do hope he is on ours.”

This modern adaptation of the old Negro church song, “I’ll Overcome Someday,” has become the unofficial theme song for the freedom struggle in the South.

We Shall Overcome

Adaptation by Zilphia Horton, Frank Hamilton, Guy Carawan, and Pete Seeger

We shall overcome, we shall overcome,
We shall overcome someday.
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,
We shall overcome someday.

We are not afraid, we are not afraid,
We are not afraid today.
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,
We shall overcome today.

Volunteers joined hands while standing beside their bus to sing the hymn
“We Shall Overcome” before boarding to depart training in Ohio for Mississippi.
Credit: Ted Polumbaum / Freedom Forum’s Newseum Collection

I’d like to tell you now about two experiences that transformed my understanding of Freedom Summer.

My 2018 Experience: Being in First Union Missionary Baptist Church

In June 2014, I participated in 50th anniversary commemoration of Freedom Summer in my hometown Meridian, MS and viewed a special screening of Stanley Nelson’s film Freedom Summer. For this documentary, people I knew of through my research—people who lived Freedom Summer—were interviewed. Among them Dave Dennis, assistant program director for COFO, who delivered the eulogy at James Chaney’s memorial service.

Dennis’s eulogy is remarkable and unforgettable. Bruce Watson (Freedom Summer: The Savage Season of 1964 That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy, 2011) calls it “a turning point in the summer” because Dave Dennis “challenged the people at the memorial and he challenged the whole movement.”

Amid clips—of Dennis speaking in Meridian’s historic First Union Memorial Baptist Church, attendees, and a sobbing Ben Chaney—Dennis explains that, “…looking out there and seeing Ben Chaney, James Chaney’s little brother, I lost it.”

From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiwZmclw5a4

In June 2018, I had the privilege of co-producing a “Stories from Civil Rights History: Then and Now” event with Eric Porter, son of the late Rev. R. S. Porter, Sr., pastor of First Union Missionary Baptist Church from 1959 to 1974. Thus, I stood and spoke, sat and listened, in the very place where Dave Dennis wrenched words from deep in his heart as he looked out on little Ben Chaney.

I invite you to view the church and Part 1 of this June 23, 2018 event and imagine yourself there, too. Being in that hallowed place brought an entirely different texture to my understanding.

My 2019 Experience: Being in Philadelphia, MS

In July 2019, I returned to Meridian for interviews for my next book, another work of historical fiction—this time about school desegregation in Meridian. I gathered teachers, students, administrators, and religious and movement leaders.

Among the students was Henry Granger, whose athletic career took him from all-Black T. J. Harris High School to the Olympics. As a high school athlete, he was surely negatively impacted by the “silence” around Black achievements. His 52 rebounds for the Harris Tigers would not have made the Meridian Star. At his mother’s insistence, he went to college rather than explore the interest expressed in him by the Harlem Globetrotters. He came home to Meridian for a career as an educator/counselor.

Henry offered to take me and my daughter, who had traveled with me to record interviews and take photographs, to Philadelphia for lunch. After a wonderful treat of all-foods-Southern from the buffet at Pearl River Resort, he drove us through Philadelphia, narrating as we rode. We passed the jail where Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were held until late on the night of June 21, 1964.

While two cars filled with members of the White Knights headed south on Highway 19, Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey released the three from jail and told them to drive back to Meridian. Unknowingly, they headed straight towards the waiting Klansmen. Soon, cars containing Sheriff Rainey and Deputy Sheriff Price fell in line behind the CORE station wagon carrying Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.

As Henry turned south on Highway 19 to drive us back to Meridian, I felt, more than saw, cars ahead of and behind us. Just, Henry explained, as it was for the station wagon with Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. But, whereas we were traveling in broad daylight, they moved in the shadows of darkness.

With my daughter in the back seat, I shivered as Henry first asked: “Can you imagine the terror they felt?”

Henry’s voice continued soft but insistent, as is his manner. We neared the turnoff for Rock Cut Road, where the station wagon was forced off Highway 19. “Can you imagine the terror they felt?”

I held my breath, not daring to look at my daughter or at Henry. “Can you imagine the terror they felt?”

I breathed again somewhere past the turnoff as we proceeded on to Meridian. But instead of taking in the mix of rolling hills, timberland, and occasional clusters of houses, I saw images of three courageous young men facing their deaths.

CORE station wagon, still smoldering, found June 23, 1964
Credit: FBI

2025: Reexamining the Questions Raised by Fear

In some ways, the questions I might have considered as a potential Freedom Summer volunteer in 1964 seem simpler than those we each must consider today in weighing whether and how to take a stand. As if that time, like the majority of the photographic images that captured it, was itself black and white.

Today, the spectre of danger has mushroomed to a degree almost too much to consider. Every aspect of our human existence feels precariously intertwined. News, which traveled more slowly in 1964, moves today with breakneck speed and relentless presence. Keeping up with it and confirming its veracity could suck up our every waking moment. Guns themselves were simpler and exponentially less ubiquitous in 1964. One’s innocent actions—going to work, taking your child to school, attending worship services—would not lead to deportation to a country one had fled.

The fight then was for liberation of Black Americans from Jim Crow and second-class citizenship. More broadly, civil rights for everyone. “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free,” as Fannie Lou Hamer said.

THE black-and-white question then was whether one accepted that tenet of our interconnectedness and was willing and able to stand up for it.

We face that question once again today. But we must also ask and answer whether we are willing and able to stand up for even more—to fight to regain vanished and vanishing rights and fundamental freedoms.

We know that many have answered these questions in the affirmative. In the words of the Women’s March, “From the People’s March, to Hands Off, to Kick Out the Clowns, millions of you are showing up and organizing through fear—with courage and clarity.”

What will I do today, through my fear—with courage and clarity? What will each of us do? How many anniversaries of the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner will it take to regain what their ultimate sacrifice helped achieve sixty-one years ago, so that we may move forward once again?

The answer is blowin’ in the wind…