Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [122]
In the coming days, summer’s discontent deepened. War now seemed certain in Vietnam, sparking a protest in Manhattan. Picketers marched outside federal buildings in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., demanding that marshals be sent to Mississippi. After forty-four days of fearing the worst, the worst had been dug out of Mississippi clay. In their Manhattan apartment, the Goodmans spoke to the press. Surrounded by microphones, Robert Goodman droned through a prepared statement while his wife sat by his side, her face as blank as her hopes. Having recently visited the Lincoln Memorial to renew their faith in America, the Goodmans now paraphrased Lincoln—“It is for us the living to dedicate ourselves that these three shall not have died in vain.” The tragedy, Robert Goodman softly said, “is not private, it is part of the public conscience of our country.” In Washington, D.C., a quiet and reflective Rita Schwerner told reporters her husband was “a very gentle man . . . totally committed to the goodness in human beings.” Reporters’ questions were probing and personal.
“Did you love your husband? ”
“Why are you so calm? ”
“What did your husband die for? ”
“That, I would imagine, is up to the people of the United States,” Rita answered. “For me, I think three very good men were killed, men who could have made unbelievable contributions to American life.” Nathan and Anne Schwerner made no public statement. James Chaney’s mother said only, “My boy died a martyr for something he believed in—I believe in—and as soon as his little brother Ben gets old enough he’ll take James’ place as a civil rights worker.”
The national press was not so restrained.
The closed society that is Mississippi is a blot on the country.
—Hartford Courant
The murders of Michael Henry Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Earl Chaney are a horrendous example of an unthinking and inhuman reaction that might happen wherever mobs make themselves custodians or nullifiers of the law.
—New York Times
None of those who have died in Mississippi have died in vain. The corpses in the river, the three bodies in the levee are all damning witnesses to a way of life that is indifferent to life. . . . The discovery of the three bodies ends a long ordeal for the boys’ parents. The ordeal for Mississippi has just begun.
—Washington Post
Back in Mississippi, those still steeped in denial anticipated a different ordeal. A few seemed repentant. “We must track down the murderers of these men and we must bring them to justice,” wrote the Vicksburg Post. “The honor of our state is at stake.” Hodding Carter’s Delta Democrat-Times noted, “Many of us in Mississippi need to take a long hard look at ourselves. We could begin by altering the sorry record of interracial justice which we have made over the past decade.” But others circled the wagons, predicting “a new hate campaign against Mississippi.” A farmer in Meridian clung to the past. “It was those integration groups that got rid of them,” he said. “They couldn’t let them live after they disappeared for fear everyone would find out it was a hoax.” Another voiced the ill many were too polite to speak of the dead: “If they had stayed home where they belonged nothing would have happened to them.”
On the day the bodies were found, dozens of volunteers were arrested for passing out Freedom Democrat leaflets. That night two more churches went up in flames. But once the news spread from Neshoba County, the violence ceased. For the next four days, with Mississippi again spotlighted in shame, a tense calm prevailed. As details of the murders emerged—they had been quick,