The Freedom Summer Murders by Don Mitchell

Author:Don Mitchell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2014-04-09T12:35:49+00:00

In January 1966, a man holds a photo of Cecil Price and Lawrence Rainey laughing at their arraignment with the ironic title “Support Your Local Police.”

Martin Luther King Jr.’s second visit to Neshoba County was far more tumultuous than his first visit the month after the three civil rights workers disappeared. On June 21, 1966, King and Ralph Abernathy went to Philadelphia, Mississippi, along with twenty volunteers, to commemorate the two-year anniversary of the murders of J.E., Andy, and Mickey. Dr. King led a march of several hundred local black people from Mount Nebo Baptist Church on the outskirts of Philadelphia to the courthouse in the center of town.

As they marched up Beacon Street Hill to the courthouse square, local whites jeered at them and screamed obscenities. When some of the whites recognized black marchers, they became enraged. White motorists buzzed the marchers in their vehicles and raced their engines when they got to the courthouse square to drown out the marchers’ prayers.

Young Dick Molpus had been admonished by his mother not to go into town that day “because there’s going to be trouble.” So naturally, “I ran right up there,” he recalled. He went to the courthouse square, where the old-fashioned sidewalks were elevated high above the streets. As Dr. King and the marchers came to the town square amid a furious white mob, Dick looked over to see Florence Mars, the town eccentric on racial matters, “holding an American flag, welcoming Dr. King.” He never forgot that moment; it “had a profound impact on me. I had just seen an act of conscience and courage.”

Encountering Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, King addressed the crowd, “In this county, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Mickey Schwerner were brutally murdered,” he cried. “I believe in my heart that the murderers are somewhere around me at this moment.”

A voice close to Cecil Price replied, “You damn right, they’re right behind you.”

King continued, “They ought to search their hearts. I want them to know that we are not afraid. If they kill three of us, they will have to kill all of us.” As the marchers applauded, King stated, “I am not afraid of any man, whether he is in Mississippi or Michigan, whether he is in Birmingham or Boston. I am not afraid of any man.”

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