63 Todd Stewart – Encyclopedia Entry: James Chaney

Todd Stewart is a senior and a history major.  He has studied history most of his life, and it’s what he does for fun on Saturday nights. His areas of interest are African American history, baseball, WW2, and FDR.  Todd will be attending law school this fall and  hopes to practice in the area of civil rights in the future.    Professor Justina Licata notes, “Todd’s final encyclopedia draft examined civil rights activist James Chaney. In this entry, Todd beautifully and succinctly discussed Chaney’s important contributions, horrific murder, and significant legacy.”

James Chaney (May 30, 1943 – June 21, 1964)

In his short life, James Chaney was involved in several of the most significant events in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.  He was a Freedom Rider, taught in Freedom Schools, helped register voters in the Freedom Summer, and sadly, he was one of the three victims in one of the most publicized civil rights cases in U.S. history.  Chaney’s disappearance brought national attention, and his story later became the basis for an Academy Award winning film.

James Earl Chaney was born on May 30, 1943, in Meridian, Mississippi to Fannie Lee and Ben Chaney Jr.  At age fifteen Chaney, along with fellow classmates, was suspended from his segregated school for wearing NAACP paper buttons.  Chaney continued to advocate for civil rights, which included recruiting for the NAACP Youth Council.  Chaney was eventually expelled.  After high school, Chaney attempted to join the Army, but his asthma led to a 4-F disqualification.  Chaney then worked in brief stints as a plasterer with his father in 1960 and 1961.⁴ After leaving the plasterers union, Chaney became more involved in the local Civil Rights Movements, and in 1962, he and his younger brother Ben participated in the Freedom Riders campaign, as well as other non-violent demonstrations.  The Freedom Rides were demonstrations aimed at ending segregated busing in the south.  Riders were often beaten or arrested, and buses were even firebombed on occasion.  The Chaney brothers rode on buses that went from Tennessee to Greenville, Mississippi, then from Greenville back to Meridian, often through hostile environments.

The following year Chaney began volunteering for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) at their Meridian office.  At CORE Chaney taught voter education classes in the organizations “Freedom Schools”, helped facilitate meetings with local leaders, and helped other CORE members navigate rural areas.¹ Colleagues of Chaney said that he was able to go places many other CORE members were afraid to enter.

In early 1964 Michael Schwerner assumed leadership at the Meridian CORE office.  Almost immediately Schwerner and Chaney became friends and started working together on numerous projects.² In June 1964 the Mt Zion Methodist Church, which was a site for one of CORE’s Freedom Schools, was burnt down and its members badly beaten by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).  Mt Zion was one of thirty-six churches burnt in Mississippi in 1964 alone.⁵ On the evening of June 21, 1964, Chaney, Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were on their way to speak to the victims when Chaney was pulled over for speeding.  Police took the three men into custody and held them at the Neshoba County Jail until later that evening.  Shortly after their release, the trio was again intercepted, except this time by two carloads of KKK members who accompanied police officers.  The three were forced into Officer Cecil Price’s car and taken to a remote rural location.³ Schwerner and Goodman were immediately shot in the heart, Chaney was beaten then shot.

Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman were initially labeled as missing.  The case garnered national attention as family members, colleagues, and the press all searched for answers.  Local and Mississippi state authorities downplayed the situation, insisting that the whole incident was a hoax orchestrated by the NAACP.  Shortly thereafter, the FBI became involved, and forty-four days after the case began, the bodies of the three men were found buried in a remote location.  Eighteen were charged in connection with the murders, out of that only seven were convicted with no one serving more than six years in jail.5 One of the seven convicted was Officer Price who only served just over four years.

After James’s funeral, the Chaney family relocated to New York because of the slew of death threats they were receiving.  Fannie Lee announced that Ben would carry on his older brother James’s work.  Ben later became involved with the Black Panther Party.  James’s grave site has frequently been vandalized and robbed in the decades following his death.  The events surrounding the murders of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman were later depicted in the award-winning film “Mississippi Burning”.

¹ Martinez, Elizebeth. Letters from Mississippi: 1964 Freedom Summer. Zephyr Press, 2014.

² Watson, Bruce. Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy. Penguin Group USA, 2011.

³ Sugarman, Tracy. We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns: The Kids Who Fought for Civil Rights in Mississippi. Syracuse University Press, 2009.

⁴ Coffey, Michele Grigsby. “Chaney, James Earl.” Mississippi Encyclopedia, Center for Study of Southern Culture, 6 May 2022, mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/chaney-james-earl/.

⁵ McAdam, Doug. Freedom Summer. Oxford University Press, 1988.