USA TODAY International Edition
‘ We deeply regret what happened here’
The heinous killings of 3 civil rights workers has loomed over a Miss. town for decades. Has it overcome its past?
PHILADELPHIA, Miss. – The killings echo through time.
They echo through the loblolly pines and red clay backwoods along the road where three men were executed by the Ku Klux Klan.
They echo past magnolia blossoms on Main Street, past the white Italian marble Confederate soldier statue outside the courthouse where a killer was finally convicted.
In one bloody summer 57 years ago – “Freedom Summer” it was called – a group of Klansmen beat up members of a Black church and torched the church to the ground. The burning lured civil rights workers to investigate.
The three workers who came to take statements about the burning were arrested by the county sheriff; their only offense was registering Black people to vote. Klansmen shot two of them in the
chest, castrated the third ( the lone Black victim) and shot him three times.
Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan and police in an attempt to scare others like them away from helping the town evolve. It almost worked.
Stained by bloodshed in 1964, Philadelphia and the surrounding Neshoba County were defined by the killings as an evil, racist region on the Mississippi landscape. “I know people who would tell me, ‘ At times in the past, we would come to Mississippi, we bypassed this county,’ ” said James Young, the first Black mayor in Philadelphia.
Leaders such as Young, who was first elected in 2009, seized and altered the narrative, working to show this area is a region that honors its past while trying to overcome it.
A 23- mile stretch of the main artery leading into Philadelphia is called the Chaney- Goodman- Schwerner Memorial Highway.
The blue memorial sign with the three names has been shot up and torn down a couple of times, but it always has been quickly replaced.
On the Neshoba. org website, visitors can find information about the “African American Heritage Driving Tour,” a selfguided excursion into the heart of hate, which features nine stops related to the grim events of 1964.
The tour ends with a reference to the Old Jolly farm where the killers dumped the bodies of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney at the suggestion of the farm’s owner. He bragged his property would be a good place to dispose of a bunch of civil rights workers.
The family who owns the farm does not allow trespassers, so there is no visible memorial.
In 1964, the Old Jolly owner was Olen Burrage, who died at 82 in 2013. His
granddaughter, Jenifer Branning, was elected to the Mississippi Senate in 2015. She did not respond to an interview request.
After 1964, most of the white residents of Philadelphia, a town of about 7,000, clammed up for decades, choosing not to assist in the investigation. Despite the FBI’s arrest of 21 white men, the state government refused to prosecute the case. Eighteen of the 21 were indicted by a grand jury.
Three years later, the feds convicted six on civil rights violations, and they served minor sentences before returning to town.
By August 1965, President Lyndon Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act into law.
The killings were the basis for the film “Mississippi Burning.”
Over the years, there have been apologies, activism and atonement, culminating in the conviction, 41 years later to the day, of the racist who planned the killings. But it wasn’t a murder conviction. Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years for each victim. Killen went to prison, where he died in 2018 after serving 13 years.
Republicans search for diversity
Sitting in Ronnie’s Steak N Grill in Philadelphia, David Carter said he always notices the looks of people when they find out where he lives.
“We had instant recognition for all the wrong reasons,” said Carter, the chair of the Neshoba County Republican Party.
“They think of ‘ Mississippi Burning,’ ” said Ty Martin, 16, chair of the Neshoba County Teenage Republicans. “There is no way we can get around that history.”
Fifty- seven years after the killings, Carter and Martin can’t figure out why someone would apologize for something that happened that long ago.
Martin said racial tension no longer exists at Neshoba Central High School. He said it’s important to remember the killings in 1964, but there is nothing that can be done about the past.
“I don’t feel shame,” said Martin, who wants to be an attorney when he gets older. “That’s part of Mississippi’s history. I have remorse for the people they hurt. I have sympathy. Burning churches is a terrible thing. I don’t think they need an apology from me. I didn’t have any part in that.”
Carter proudly offered a tidbit about a Confederate general: “My great grandfather held Robert E. Lee’s horse at Appomattox,” Carter said.
Martin said he is part of a “direct line” to Lee on his mother’s side.
“I had no part in Lee’s campaign across the South,” Martin said. “Why should I apologize? I’m not going to say I’m sorry for what my ancestors did.”
They said they agree with removing the stars and bars as the state flag of Mississippi.
They said they launched a recruitment effort to make Mississippi’s Republican Party more diverse.
All 10 members of the Neshoba County Teenage Republicans are white. They joke that if Martin can coax “one Black girl” to join his group, Carter “will buy him a Corvette.”
Leroy Clemons, who grew up in Philadelphia, said he was called the N- word the one time he dared to go to the Neshoba County Fair.
“I see our past trying to repeat itself,” Clemons said in Philadelphia City Hall. “It’s important to remember, so we never go back again. We’ve been deliberate to teach the history. We are careful we don’t pass down the hate.”
Clemons became president of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter and an alderman, who was elected on the strength of the Black vote, he said.
Clemons was a co- founder of the Philadelphia Coalition, which set out to honor the memory of the victims of the killings in 1964 and to bring justice to Killen, who had been free for 40 years.
“I didn’t want my kids and grandkids to grow up and experience what I experienced,” Clemons said.
The Philadelphia Coalition existed only in the months surrounding the 40th anniversary of the killings, but its work can still be felt. The coalition asked for justice, the case was reopened and Killen was convicted.
Clemons said he doesn’t see hatred in the eyes of the young people anymore.
“The kids don’t see you as Black,” he said. “They see you as who you are.”
An apology changed everything
In 1980, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan came to the Neshoba County Fair. He had just accepted his party’s nomination, and his first stop was in the South.
On that hot Mississippi day, he said he supported “state’s rights,” which segregationists heard as a call to back him. They did, and Reagan won in a landslide.
One of the politicians assigned to meet Reagan that day was Dick Molpus, who worked for the governor’s office. Molpus had grown up in Philadelphia.
He had witnessed a cross burning and a police beating of a Black man. He was raised in a “hellacious period where the rule of law broke down.”
He said he was disgusted to hear Reagan use loaded language in the cradle of the civil rights struggle.
Molpus rose in his career to be Mississippi’s secretary of state.
In 1989, Molpus was asked to speak at the 25th anniversary of the killings. He stood outside Mount Zion United Methodist Church, a few yards from where the previous Mount Zion was burned by the Klan.
In the audience were the families of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney. No official representative of the state had ever said the following words to the families:
“We deeply regret what happened here 25 years ago,” Molpus said. “We wish we could undo it. We are profoundly sorry that they are gone. We wish we could bring them back. Every decent person in Philadelphia and Neshoba County and Mississippi feels that way.”
He concluded: “My heart is full today because I know that if James Chaney, Andy Goodman and Mickey Schwerner were to return today, they would see a Philadelphia and a Mississippi that, while far from perfect, are closer to being the kind of place the God who put us here wants them to be.”
Six years later, Molpus ran for governor. His opponent used those words against him, chastising Molpus for living in the past.
An anti- apology advertisement played on country music radio stations across Mississippi.
Molpus said he was ahead in the race when the ads began to run. He lost to Kirk Fordice by 10 percentage points.
“It was not a mistake to say those words,” Molpus said. “Things are more important than winning. Governors come and go, but those words are something I still feel good about.”
Mayor wins fourth term
Young has been the mayor of Philadelphia, Mississippi, since 2009.
“I did not make history,” Young said. “History happened to me. I understood I was standing on broad shoulders.”
Young was a paramedic and a county supervisor. He was an original member of the Philadelphia Coalition.
Here’s what he never was: a rabblerouser. He tries to stay right down the middle. “I was not the rebel,” Young said, “not the protester.”
Young was raised on a corn and cotton farm in a community called Stallo, which is in unincorporated Neshoba County.
“Did what happened in 1964 impact my family?” Young asked. “No. We rode horses and fished.”
He got into politics after he spoke at a county supervisor’s meeting asking for more equipment for his paramedic squad. He said his request was ignored.
“You learn who makes the decisions, and you learn how those decisions have impact,” Young said.
He knew about “the troubles” in Philadelphia, but he didn’t dwell on them. He said he has not faced racism.
“Not once,” Young said.
He swore he didn’t know how significant his victory was in 2009 until after he won. He said he looked at the position of mayor “as just another job.”
“People from all over the United States were calling,” Young said. “It was like a national phenomenon. People brought their children to see if I was real.
“Senior citizens would meet me with tears coming down their faces.”
He got a letter from Texas.
The writer explained his health was failing and he wouldn’t be on this Earth much longer, but he felt like he had to write.
“I wanted to congratulate you,” the man wrote.
Of all the congratulations, that’s the one Young remembers most.
“The man was blind,” Young said.