‘You must know this story’: Why Freedom Summer’s murders matter today (2024)

Jewel Rush McDonald, 78

A Philadelphia native who grew up during the Jim Crow era. As a child, she picked cotton on her family’s farm. She went to segregated schools — with outside toilets and water pumps — until her senior year.

We had the old raggedy buses, we got all the raggedy books. We never got new books — they were always somebody’s name in them. When the new books come in, they gave them to the White kids.

My mother told us to be nice and civil to everybody. Say ‘yes, ma’am’ and ‘no, ma’am,’ ‘yes, sir’ and all that. She said you need to be courteous whether they’re White or Black or whatever. But she said, you’re going to find out in life that you’re not going to have the same privileges as the Whites will have.

I don’t really think she thought it was going to get a heck of a lot better. She thought there was a better way somewhere, but it wasn’t here in Mississippi.

My mother had money to turn in, so my brother says, well, I’ll just drive you up there, it won’t take you long. [The committee didn’t] have a lot to talk about, just who’s doing this and who’s doing that, who was going to do the revival. It was an old wooden church with a lot of windows in it. Everybody that should have been there was already there. My mother was sitting listening, and she kept seeing all these lights, the reflections of car lights outside. They were like turning around, but nobody was coming in.

When she and my brother got out to go home, he was the first one that [the Klan] grabbed. Just as he got onto the road, there they walk out with flashlights. ‘Where are the White people?’ My brother said, ‘White people? There’s no White people.’ They told him, you’re a damn liar. Pull that damn truck over in the ditch. And that’s when they yanked him out and started to beat him. He said they had to have brass knuckles or something in the hand, because every time they hit him side of the head, it was so hard. There’s nobody’s fist that hard. He said that was just the worst thing.

They went around and yanked my mother out. She said it had to be a gun that was hitting her. She was all bruised up and bleeding.

At home, we was thinking, where in the world are they? Finally we heard the truck drive up. And when they walked in the door, my mother just broke down. She said there was White people out there tonight — there was Klan outside the church. I never seen the Klan in nothing. You mighta had a neighbor that was living next to you that was a Klan, but if you never saw them with their attire on, you wouldn’t know what they were. She said, they beat us. She said some of them had hoods on, some didn’t. She didn’t recognize any of them.

When you stop and think about it, it’s a wonder they didn’t kill my brother and my mother. It took me the longest time to even talk about it. It’s not the easiest now to talk about it.”

Dawn Lea Mars Chalmers, 54

A Philadelphia native whose family roots are generations deep in Neshoba County. Her cousin wrote a book about the trauma of 1964; her father defended one of the men on trial in 1967. For decades she has run a gift shop on the downtown square.

I was a freshman or sophom*ore at Ole Miss when ‘Mississippi Burning’ came out. I was just so ashamed that I didn’t know much about [the murders]. I can’t even believe that the sensationalism of Hollywood is what made me understand what a big deal it was. I remember calling my parents and being, like, ‘What the hell?’

My father talked very little about it. And when I was on the 2004 coalition, I pressed him a little more, and he said, ‘Dawn Lea, there are things that I just do not think it is safe for you to know.’ And that’s where he left it there.

I felt like it was something that had been hidden from me. It was like that for a lot of people around here, this deep, dark, secret stain on our community. And that’s why I wanted to be a part of the coalition. I was going to actually get to talk to Black people about it and White people about it, and Choctaw Indians about it, because this all happened right here, and it was just never discussed. So it was like this big roundtable gathering. And what is crazy is that we all felt the same way about it. We all had these feelings of just disgust and shame. Like we should have known how it was. Maybe it’s like when you’re in the middle of domestic violence, and that you think everybody is the same way.

The main goal was to get the attorney general to file charges. And when he went against Edgar Ray [Killen], there was a sense of accomplishment with that whole group of people. It was some sort of reckoning that we felt led to do and did.

There is a sense now, just like it was when I was growing up. People are starting not to talk about it anymore. Everybody is, let’s look ahead to the future, let’s don’t dwell on the past. But I think every kid in this town should know what happened. And personally, I think they should be taught by someone who was on the right side of things.

That’s what this generation owes the generation that brought light to it and the generation that went through it. To make sure people know what those boys were fighting for and how terrible it was in this community that they lost their lives here for that particular reason — registering Blacks to vote. That is so important because I know so many young people who don’t vote, and I don’t think anyone’s encouraging them to do so.

The Klan, they were terrorists. They were hatemongers, extremists who were burning down churches and beating up congregants. The feeling around [now] feels like that sometimes, that feeling of anger and hate. My God, can we not move forward while still talking and understanding what happened in the past?”

Leroy Clemons, 62

A Philadelphia native who considers himself “an ambassador for my city.” He endured death threats in 2004 as co-chair of the Philadelphia Coalition and today works with youth as well as leads civil rights tours. At the site where the three activists were slain, he kneels as he describes their terror.

It was like you grew up in a time when people had all this voluntary amnesia and just would not talk about what was going on.

When we started the coalition in 2004, that’s what came up. That was the first time Black folks started hearing stories and that White folk was hearing about what it was like for them, too. Many of them talked about not knowing; we had a whole generation that grew up that didn’t know. I mean, prior to the movie ‘Mississippi Burning’ coming out, the kids around here couldn’t have named not one of those guys who had come into town.

So we were trying to plan this 40th anniversary and everybody was saying how much Philadelphia had changed. But how can we really say we’ve changed when we’ve never acknowledged our past? We’ve never as a community ever acknowledged that this happened here. For 39 years, Mount Zion had carried this burden by themselves.

This is what I tell the young people: You need to know this story. In Mississippi, it is taught very little. Most of the tours that I do with student groups are from out of the state. I think it’s word of mouth; if I advertised, that would be my full-time job.

How many tours from Neshoba? Zero. Zero tours from the school districts here. You know, you got this big push about history and all the controversy around it. I think some of the teachers are just nervous about exposing their kids to it. But other communities embrace it. Other states embrace it. I’ve got a group come from Portland, [Oregon]. They come twice a year.

Our first stop is always Mount Nebo Missionary Baptist Church because I like to take people into the community. Then we go the McClelland Café. That’s the only Black-owned business that survived from the civil rights era.

It immediately takes me back to that night — as a Black man, as a Black person. I can see that how dark it was out there at night. I can see the faces of those young boys standing out there with these men, not knowing what to expect.

When I’m down on my knees, and I’m telling the story, it’s like I can feel Michael there holding his friend, James, in his arms.

I always say to young people: I’m going to tell you what happened. But I want y’all, more importantly, to understand why those things were happening. What was the environment that allowed those things to happen. And then at the end, we always talk about what are things that they can do, that they can continue to do, to ensure that things like this never happen here again.

When I do the tours, I’m always careful to make sure that we end on a positive note, that we talk about all the negative things, but I also bring them up to date about what’s going on today. I don’t want them to leave here thinking that Neshoba County is still like it was in 1964, because it’s not. Even understanding where we are now versus 2004, it’s light-years apart.”

Sarah Richardson and Marlee Washington

Both 17, rising seniors and extraordinarily active in clubs and sports. Richardson, left, wants to be a lawyer. Washington is thinking about medical school. This spring, they and other members of the youth group Leadership Neshoba went on one of Clemons’s tours.

Richardson: The tour was really hard. I knew part of the story, that there was a Black man and two White men that were killed. And I knew that White people were the ones who were acting upon this.

But I was just like, why? All I could say was, why? Were you offended that they were doing something better than you? Were you offended that they were trying to make a change? Like, what made you act on such terrible things? How was Blacks and Whites being separated even a thing?

Washington: Mr. Leroy took us around to the place where the three men got killed, the jailhouse where they were held, the church that was burned down, all over.

The biggest impact was us going to the exact place where the three men were murdered and knowing that one of the men took off running. We saw where he took off running. That just kind of struck a nerve. It was emotional.

It’s probably not what everyone wanted to hear. But we need to hear it because they're not going to tell us about it in school.

Richardson: If I could change how history was taught in schools, that would be something. Yes, you need to know what happens in the world and what made the United States the United States and blah, blah blah, blah blah. But you also need to know what was where you live.

You should know the story of your community, no matter where you come from. Good, bad, ugly, pretty. All of it, every aspect of it. We can't hide the reality. We can't deny what happened.

Washington: Philadelphia will show what it wants to show and what the city wants to be known for. I feel they should do more. They have [historic] place markers, but I’ve been in Philadelphia in my 17 years of life and have never seen those place markers because I just drive by.

I feel like everyone has the same reaction honestly, which is just shocked that the murders happened. Because everyone is like, some things just aren’t right. No matter where you were raised or how you were raised, you know some things are not right.

Richardson: Me being how I am now as a 17-year-old in 2024, 60 years ago if I would have been the same person I would have walked the streets fighting for Blacks the way that they were fighting for themselves, for civil rights, all those movements. I would have been right there with them. Everybody should have freedom to speak however they want. Everybody should be able to vote. So I would have marched right along with them.”

James A. Young, 68

A Neshoba County native who as a boy was one of its schools’ early “trial integrations.” Before becoming mayor, he was a paramedic and county supervisor. Four terms later, he leads a city where African Americans are just over half of the population.

I’ve had many people ask me. How could I get elected in this community? And there was a lot of variables. One, I was a paramedic. I touched a lot of people’s lives — in some of their worst state, we showed up and made a difference. They knew my father; he had a good reputation. My mom had a good reputation. I had worked in the community for years and years before running for this office, so I was not an unknown quantity.

But I had to get elected by the whole body of people. And maybe, I’m just going to say this as a maybe, they looked beyond the skin and looked at the performance. And that's where it should be.

I won my first race for mayor by 45 votes. We went after every live body that was registered, and sometimes we had to literally plead with them to go vote. We found out some wasn’t going because they couldn’t read. Some wasn’t going because they didn’t want to tell folks they couldn’t read. So we worked through those barriers, and the people come out of there saying, wow, this is the first time I voted. We’re talking 2009.

[After that first victory], I got calls and letters from all over the United States and several nations. Japan, China, Australia, Germany, France. I’m thinking, I didn’t know y’all knew Philadelphia existed. We’re just a small dot on the map. I got calls and letters from people in prison, from doctors, lawyers, teachers. People who had left Philadelphia and left Mississippi, saying I’m not ashamed to say I’m from Mississippi now.

The freedom to vote is not a big issue. Going to vote is the issue. So the power of the vote, it’s not stifled by threat anymore. It’s stifled by setting up barriers that are rooted under the guise of being fair and equal.

This is me: The only way you’re going to stop me from voting is you lock the door before I get there. The only way. If you say, I got to have 10 fingers raised when I walk through the door, so be it. You know, they fussed about I.D. And I say, you have to have I.D. to get Medicare, Medicaid. You have to have I.D. to get into these hospitals. Sure enough have to have one to get into the state capitals. So what’s the problem with an I.D. to go vote?

When you know what they’re trying to do and you still fall for it, they’ve won. It’s not a complicated thing.

I don’t dwell in the past. I know what it used to be. And I tell them sometime: I’m thankful that I’m old enough to know what went on, but young enough to see the benefits of those struggles.”

Tim Moore, 49

A native of Neshoba County who left Mississippi early in his career, then returned for family. He serves as executive director of Community Development Partnership, which helps to disseminate the tourist brochure “Roots of Struggle, Rewards of Sacrifice.”

There's a lot of times when people from different areas come down to Philadelphia expecting things to be still segregated like it was in the ‘60s. Nobody intermingling at all. And that's just not the case. That was Philadelphia then. This is Philadelphia now.

We already have several Freedom Trail markers, and I know we’re supposed to be getting another in June. One thing we’ve got to start doing [with other counties] is linking the markers. You know, work out a brochure that links Freedom Trail from where it began all the way down to the Deep South so that anybody can start anywhere else and pick up the trail. That’s how you keep the lives of the civil rights workers living on.

The markers that we have are at the sites where everything happened. But they’re not on the beaten path. So that’s why we have to make sure that we have the documentation and the brochures there, with good maps for people to follow.

History was one of the things that I always loved, and I remember feeling you do need to answer for history. [Killen] never had answered for anything; it was a hung jury on his civil rights trial. And that’s not right: You were definitely involved in this.

My father-in-law’s actually a pastor of one of the churches that Edgar Ray Killen pastored in his younger years. He had church members coming up to him thinking that they needed to get rebaptized because Edgar Ray was the one that baptized them. As my father-in-law says, he’s not the one that saved you. That is the Lord Jesus Christ.

When I decided to come back to Philadelphia, my prayer was, Lord, if you could help me be able to get back to my hometown, spend time with my family and with my grandparents. If there is a part in this community that I can play a part in to better my community, put me in that path. Does that mean making sure that I learn about the past? Making sure I learn about the true story, good or bad? Yes.”

Eddie Hinton, 64

Born in Starkville, about an hour up the road from Philadelphia, and still lives there today. He pastors four small congregations in Neshoba County, rotating from one to another every other Sunday. Mount Zion is among them.

This is where I feel the pain. This is where I feel people went through something, they suffered something. The members of this church, sometimes I think that they have flashbacks. I find myself trying to find words to comfort. A message of healing is what I search for most of the time, a message of healing and a message of comfort. Even after all those years, they’re still hurting.

You think about your people, trying to move in a better position in life, to be able to have a voice to vote. Then you look at what’s going on even today. Voting rights is having an issue even today. The three civil rights workers have given their life. I think that they knew that they were taking a chance. So they made a sacrifice. And even after that story and other stories that have been told, we’re still dealing with voting rights? I’m deeply concerned. And feeling there should be something else that I could do other than just preaching and pastoring.

When I was a smaller kid, I thought what had happened [here] was to just only Blacks. Something about the Ku Klux Klansmen killed some boys down in Philadelphia. So Philadelphia was sort of like, this is not the place you want to go. I didn’t realize it was two Whites [killed] as well. But if it wasn’t for the two White guys, then none of this would even surface to the top.

I’m still learning. And even though I might pick up a book and read what happened, there’s nothing like hearing it one on one with some of the members.

The first thought that cross my mind when I come out is the stories that I’ve heard concerning the members. Even though they was having a meeting in the church [that June night in 1964], they constantly would see lights that would hit the window, but they never did pay much mind to it at the moment.

And then when they come out, they’re approached by the Ku Klux Klansmen. Some say it was also the sheriff, the deputy and the National Guard. And they was beaten in leaving the church.

So when I'm kind of late in the evening, it make me a little worried about am I going to walk out into something unexpected? It still haunt me today. From the stories that I've heard and from the things that I kind of feel to be true.

It still feel like a ghost spirit or something still in the area, you would say. It’s still spooky, still a little scary, still a little shaky. And in my mind, I do not want to be caught here at night by myself.”