Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [47]
Within a few days, three photos would be seen around the nation—Goodman posed with a choirboy innocence; Chaney, his kindly face tilted; Schwerner, goateed, with a wry smile. Seen over and over, the trio would soon seem familiar to volunteers, as if they knew these three well. Some would talk of meeting “Andy” in Ohio, having had dinner with Mickey, or hearing Chaney talk to their group. Yet this morning, there were no faces, no trace of the men—just names on a blackboard.
JAMES CHANEY—CORE STAFF
MICHAEL SCHWERNER—CORE STAFF
ANDREW GOODMAN—SUMMER PROJECT VOLUNTEER
NESHOBA COUNTY—DISAPPEARED
In his five months in Mississippi, some had come to revile Mickey Schwerner as “that Communist Jew Nigger lover.” Yet those who knew him were struck by his kindness, his easygoing manner, his lack of hatred for anyone, black or white. He was “full of life and ideas,” “the gentlest man I have ever known.” A coworker in Meridian paid him the compliment he would have cherished most: “More than any white person I have ever known he could put a colored person at ease.” Of average size and height, usually dressed in a gray sweatshirt, jeans, and black sneakers, Mickey Schwerner loved W. C. Fields, a good game of poker, and the hapless New York Mets. Raised by liberal parents—his father, a wig manufacturer, was a member of the War Resisters League—Mickey grew from a high school beatnik into a veterinary student before becoming a dedicated social worker with a degree from Cornell. By the summer of 1963, he was deeply involved in the social services of lower Manhattan. Each day he rose at 6:00 a.m. to work on civil rights with CORE. He spent afternoons helping teens in a social settlement on the Lower East Side. After dinner, he made home visits or attended meetings, often till midnight. His new wife, Rita, shared his dedication. While still a student at Queens College, she tutored middle school students, did her own work for CORE, and joined her husband on picket lines, where both were arrested for protesting segregated unions.
During the summer of 1963, as racial violence seared America, the civil rights movement captivated the Schwerners. That August, Mickey took teens to the March on Washington, yet it was not Martin Luther King but the Birmingham church bombing a few weeks later that drew him south. “I am now so thoroughly identified with the civil rights struggle that I have an emotional need to offer my services in the South,” the twenty-four-year-old Schwerner wrote on his application for CORE in Mississippi. “I would feel guilty and almost hypocritical if I did not give full time.”
In January 1964, Mickey and Rita Schwerner sublet their Brooklyn Heights apartment, left their cocker spaniel, Gandhi, with friends, and drove their ’59 VW to Jackson. Within days, they were in Meridian, the first white civil rights workers to penetrate Mississippi’s second largest city. Sleeping on cots, showering at a local black hotel, they lived less on their meager salaries than off the infinite energy of their ideals. Each day they tackled the job of turning a filthy old office into a Freedom House. Rita swept, cleaned, and sewed long, blue curtains while Mickey and an eager volunteer named James Chaney did repairs and built bookcases. By late February the house was bustling. A dozen or more kids showed up for Saturday story hours. On Tuesday and Thursday evenings, adults came to voter registration classes. Most afternoons, teenagers dropped by just to be with the Schwerners.
Mickey loved to joke and jive with the kids he called “Mississippi’s best hope,” taking them on drives in his VW and talking about freedom. Yet some blacks in Meridian were not ready for this northern couple’s push on civil rights. A high school principal threw Mickey off campus, but he and Rita went back and leafleted a basketball game, drawing more teens to their Freedom House. When the Schwerners talked about removing “Colored Only” signs, CORE thought they were moving too fast, but they were allowed to organize boycotts of downtown stores that refused to hire black