When I was in the fifth grade at Casey Elementary in Jackson, Mississippi, my best friend, Mary Elizabeth, had a birthday party in early March. My dad wanted me to watch a movie with him; it was Mississippi Burning. I couldn’t stop crying and had to go late to the party. I didn’t understand why the white characters were taunting, beating, and killing the black characters. This was the first time I found out that three young men, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, were killed on June 21,1964, near Philadelphia, Mississippi. I made my dad tell me the whole story over and over, about the Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff pulling the boys over after letting them out of jail. A group of Ku Klux Klan hooligans shot all three of them, burned their car, and buried them in a dam near the Neshoba County Fair. I couldn’t come to terms with the idea that the place where my father grew up could be so evil or that the dam I had passed all my life on the way to the Neshoba County Fair was the resting place for three young men.

As I grew older, I kept reading about the murders and what really happened. I wrote papers on how Mississippi Burning distorted the facts, the COFO (Council of Federated Organizations) office in Philadelphia, and the black community’s reaction to the murders in 1964. It is a mesmerizing topic. Secrets, racism, and confusion mark the murders that no one can forget. Forty years later, Philadelphia, Mississippi, still carries that burden. Now, for the first time since 1964, black, white, and Choctaw community members are working together and are planning a commemoration of that 40th anniversary. The residents of Philadelphia want the world to see a unified community on June 20, 2004, instead of allowing this divisive tragedy to continue overshadow their town. The community members are working to acknowledge the past so these wrongs will never be repeated.

The Mississippi Development Authority is collaborating with the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi and the Philadelphia-based Community Development Partnership to produce a civil rights tour brochure and an oral history project of those who participated in the events of 1964.

Philadelphia, Mississippi, is coming to terms with its racially charged past and is moving forward to help the entire community allow the lives of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner to set them free.

Nash Molpus