Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [57]
Suspicions of a hoax were spreading throughout Mississippi. The Jackson Clarion-Ledger claimed Andrew Goodman had been spotted boarding a bus in Baton Rouge. CORE, rumor had it, had phoned police on Sunday afternoon before the men came up missing. And the Schwerners’ VW? Odd that it was nowhere to be found. Letters to editors “proved” the hoax; otherwise why would Andrew Goodman, whose boyish face networks were showing in footage from the Ohio training, have been filmed before he “disappeared” ? And wasn’t Mississippi getting a black eye on the nightly news? Walter Cronkite spoke of “Bloody Neshoba.” NBC interviewed a Neshoba County man who said Sheriff Rainey was involved. ABC let Mississippians damn their state with callous denial: “I believe them jokers planned this and are sittin’ up in New York laughin’ at us Mississippi folk,” one man said. A woman added, “If they’re dead, I feel like they asked for it. They came here lookin’ for trouble.”
In contrast to Mississippi, the aggrieved families displayed uncommon grace. On Thursday afternoon, TV cameras jammed the Goodmans’ stylish Manhattan apartment. While flashbulbs popped, Carolyn Goodman read an appeal “to all parents everywhere, particularly the parents of Mississippi who, like myself, have experienced the softness, the warmth and the beauty of a child whom they cherish and love and want to protect. I want to beg them to cooperate in every way possible in the search for these three boys.” Graying Anne Schwerner then spoke about James Chaney, “a Negro, a friend, and a brother to my boy Mickey.” Though she had never met Mrs. Chaney, she wished “I could take her in my arms.” Back in Mississippi, Fannie Lee Chaney said little, even when a cross was burned on her lawn. This was not the first disappearance in her family. Decades earlier, her grandfather had refused to sell his land to a white man. Only his shoes, shirt, and watch were ever found. Now, head in her hands, the stunned woman told the press, “I’m just hoping and not thinking.” Like President Johnson, most assumed the three men were dead. “For God’s sake,” Nathan Schwerner shouted at a reporter. “Don’t you know we’ll never see Mickey again?” An FBI agent confided, “We’re now looking for bodies.” Yet the mothers insisted their sons might be found in some jail, some barn, somewhere. While they held out hope, Rita Schwerner, whom some had thought too small and frail to work in Mississippi, returned to take on the entire state.
As the mothers spoke to the press, Rita flew into Jackson. Speaking to reporters at the airport, she announced, “I am going to find my husband and the other two people. I am going to find out what happened to them.” Rita also issued several demands—“that scores of federal marshals be sent to Mississippi . . . that there be a full scale investigation of reports of the involvement of some law enforcement officers . . . that President Johnson’s personal envoy Allen Dulles confer with those in Meridian who know precisely what is going on.” “In a word,” she concluded, “we demand ‘freedom now.’ ” Accompanied by SNCC’s Bob Zellner, Rita then headed for the capitol to speak to Governor Paul Johnson.
After listening to a clerk go on and on about the beauty of Mississippi, Rita finally learned the governor was at his mansion, greeting George Wallace. “I’m sure Wallace is much more important to Mississippi than three missing men,” Rita said. Entering the mansion grounds, she found the two governors heading a receiving line. Stepping in line, she heard someone mention the missing men. And she heard Johnson joke, “Governor Wallace and I are the only ones who know where they are, and we’re not telling.” Moments later, when Johnson bent to greet Rita, Bob Zellner shook his hand and introduced her as the wife of Michael Schwerner. When Johnson recoiled, Zellner held tightly to his hand, asking if it was true “that you and Governor Wallace here know where the missing civil rights workers are?” Panic broke out as reporters shouted questions and state troopers yanked Zellner away. Wallace and