Remembering James Chaney, Voting Rights Hero and Martyr

Share

Explore Our Galleries

A man stands in front of the Djingareyber mosque on February 4, 2016 in Timbuktu, central Mali. 
Mali's fabled city of Timbuktu on February 4 celebrated the recovery of its historic mausoleums, destroyed during an Islamist takeover of northern Mali in 2012 and rebuilt thanks to UN cultural agency UNESCO.
TO GO WITH AFP STORY BY SEBASTIEN RIEUSSEC / AFP / SÉBASTIEN RIEUSSEC
African Peoples Before Captivity
Shackles from Slave Ship Henrietta Marie
Kidnapped: The Middle Passage
Enslaved family picking cotton
Nearly Three Centuries Of Enslavement
Image of the first black members of Congress
Reconstruction: A Brief Glimpse of Freedom
The Lynching of Laura Nelson_May_1911 200x200
One Hundred Years of Jim Crow
Civil Rights protest in Alabama
I Am Somebody! The Struggle for Justice
Black Lives Matter movement
NOW: Free At Last?
#15-Beitler photo best TF reduced size
Memorial to the Victims of Lynching
hands raised black background
The Freedom-Lovers’ Roll Call Wall
Frozen custard in Milwaukee's Bronzeville
Special Exhibits
Dr. James Cameron
Portraiture of Resistance

Breaking News!

Today's news and culture by Black and other reporters in the Black and mainstream media.

Ways to Support ABHM?

From the African American Registry

James Chaney was born on this date in 1943 in Meridian, Mississippi.

During Freedom Summer in 1964, Chaney worked with an interracial team, including New Yorkers Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, to organize a community center in Meridian and to register African Americans for voting.

James Chaney, civil rights hero and martyr
James Chaney, civil rights hero and martyr

On June 21, 1964, with two Jewish associates, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman working with the  Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Mississippi Freedom Summer project, the three set out to investigate a church bombing in Longdale, MS, a potential site for a Freedom School teaching literacy and voter education. As the three of them were driving back to Meridian, police in Philadelphia, MS, detained them. Chaney was arrested for speeding and Schwerner and Goodman were arrested as suspects in the church bombing. No phone calls were allowed nor were any of them allowed to pay the fines.

The men were released that night but killed by members of the KKK. The FBI recovered the bodies of the murdered men from an earthen dam on August 4.

Read more about Chaney and about what happened to his killers here and here.

Voter disenfranchisement still deters Black voters.

More Black history stories like this.

Comments Are Welcome

Note: We moderate submissions in order to create a space for meaningful dialogue, a space where museum visitors – adults and youth –– can exchange informed, thoughtful, and relevant comments that add value to our exhibits.

Racial slurs, personal attacks, obscenity, profanity, and SHOUTING do not meet the above standard. Such comments are posted in the exhibit Hateful Speech. Commercial promotions, impersonations, and incoherent comments likewise fail to meet our goals, so will not be posted. Submissions longer than 120 words will be shortened.

See our full Comments Policy here.

Leave a Comment