Freedom Summer’s agony revisited

Two people whose lives were changed by the murders — one a brother of a victim, the other an activist who befriended the three — have mixed emotions about how justice will be served, or achieved, by the trial.

Dave Dennis was Mississippi field secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality and the co-organizer of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's Freedom Summer, the voter registration project.

A fateful illness
Dennis’ memories of the days before Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman went missing include recollections of their zeal for their mission, and a fateful illness that may have saved his own life.

Goodman and Schwerner came south from New York City to be part of the registration project. The husky Schwerner, 24, had earlier aroused the ire of locals, who derisively called him “the goatee” and “Jew boy” for his work in spearheading a boycott of a white-owned business. June 20th was the first day for the rangy, athletic Goodman — all of 20 years old — as a civil rights worker.

And for the slender, earnest 21-year-old Chaney, who hailed from nearby Meridian, Miss., voter registration was a mission pursued up close and personal, from the crucible of the segregationist South.

‘I borrowed Mickey Schwerner’s Volkswagen at the time, so they could use my car, a station wagon. I said for them to keep the car and go on to Philadelphia.’ — DAVE DENNIS Freedom Summer co-organizer

“The kids who came down there, they really believed in democracy. They were ready to die for it,” Dennis said.

“What I remember is the day before, when they came through Jackson,” he said. “I talked to Schwerner and Chaney; we talked about strategy.

“I was supposed to go with them but I had a bad case of bronchitis.”

“We had traded cars for them to go to Oxford, Miss.,” Dennis said. “I borrowed Mickey Schwerner’s Volkswagen at the time, so they could use my car, a station wagon. I said for them to keep the car and go on to Philadelphia.”

Forty-four days passed between June 21, when they disappeared, and Aug. 4, when their bodies were discovered.

‘My brother was invincible’
For Benjamin Chaney, the memories of summer 1964 are of an older brother he would never see again. “I remember that the people from the office told my mother that my brother didn't report in from Philadelphia,” said Chaney, who lived in Meridian, Miss.

“They were concerned,” he said. “The only thing going through my mind is that I believed my brother was going to pop up at any time. I thought my brother was invincible. Nothing was going to happen to him.”

Social justice through nonviolent activism became the younger Chaney's life as well; he would go on to direct the Community Commission on Civil Rights, a Manhattan-based watchdog organization.

“I was going to do what he was doing,” he said, “so that no other family would go through what my family was going through.”

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