The Lasting Impact of a Civil Rights Icon's Murder
One of three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in 1964 was James Chaney. His younger brother, Ben, would never be the same
- By Hank Klibanoff
- Smithsonian magazine, December 2008, Subscribe
In the 44 days that his brother and two other young civil rights workers were missing in Neshoba County, Mississippi, 12-year-old Ben Chaney was quiet and withdrawn. He kept his mother constantly in sight as she obsessively cleaned their house, weeping all the while.
Bill Eppridge, a Life magazine photographer, arrived in Neshoba County shortly after the bodies of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were pulled from the muck of an earthen dam on August 4, 1964. Inside the Chaney home in nearby Meridian, Eppridge felt that Ben was overwhelmed, "not knowing where he was or where he should have been," he recalls. "That draws you to somebody, because you wonder what is going on there."
On August 7, Eppridge watched as the Chaney family left to bury their eldest son. As they awaited a driver, Fannie Lee Chaney and her husband, Ben Sr., sat in the front seat of a sedan; their daughters, Barbara, Janice and Julia, sat in the back with Ben, who hunched forward so he'd fit.
Eppridge took three frames. As he did so, he could see Ben's bewilderment harden into a cold stare directed right at the lens. "There were a dozen questions in that look," Eppridge says. "As they left, he looked at me and said, three times, 'I'm gonna kill 'em, I'm gonna kill 'em, I'm gonna kill 'em.' "
The frames went unpublished that year in Life; most news photographs of the event showed a sobbing Ben Chaney Jr. inside the church. The one on this page is included in "Road to Freedom," a photography exhibit organized by Atlanta's High Museum and on view through March 9 at the Smithsonian's S. Dillon Ripley Center in Washington, D.C., presented by the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Chaney, now 56, cannot recall what he told Eppridge in 1964, but he remembers being livid that his mother had to suffer and that his father's generation had not risen up years before so that his brother's generation wouldn't have had to. "I know I was angry," he says.
Ben had lost his idol. Nine years older, James Earl Chaney—J.E., Ben called him—had bought Ben his first football uniform and taken him for haircuts. He had taken Ben along as he organized prospective black voters in the days leading to Freedom Summer. Ben, who had been taken into custody himself for demonstrating for civil rights, recalls J.E. walking down the jailhouse corridor to secure his release, calling, "Where's my brother? "
"He treated me," Ben says, "like I was a hero."
After the funeral, a series of threats drove the Chaneys from Mississippi. With help from the Schwerners, Goodmans and others, they moved to New York City. Ben enrolled in a private, majority-white school and adjusted to life in the North. But by 1969 he was restless. In Harlem, he says, he was elated to see black people running their own businesses and determining their own fates. He joined the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army.
In May 1970, two months shy of 18, Chaney and two other young men drove to Florida with a vague plan to buy guns. Soon, five people, including one of their number, were dead in Florida and South Carolina.
Chaney said he didn't even witness any of the slayings. He was acquitted of murder in South Carolina. But in Florida—where the law allows for murder charges to be brought in crimes that result in death—he was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to three life terms.
One of his first visitors in jail was Bill Eppridge. Before setting up his cameras, Eppridge fired off a quick Polaroid. His editor liked the Polaroid best. Life readers saw Ben Chaney with his eyes framed by prison bars. "He just looks scared," says Eppridge, who, after the weekly Life folded in 1972, went to work for Sports Illustrated.
"I can imagine I was afraid," Chaney says. "I was in jail."
He served 13 years. Paroled in 1983, he started the James Earl Chaney Foundation to clean up his brother's vandalized grave site in Meridian; since 1985, he has worked as a legal clerk for former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the lawyer who secured his parole. He envisions creating a Chaney, Goodman, Schwerner Center for Human Rights in Meridian.
In 1967, eighteen men faced federal charges of civil rights violations in the slayings of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman. Seven were convicted by an all-white jury, eight were acquitted and three were released after jurors deadlocked. The state of Mississippi prosecuted no one for 38 years. But in 2005—after six years of new reporting on the case by Jerry Mitchell of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger—a sawmill operator named Edgar Ray Killen was indicted on charges of murder.
On June 21, 2005, exactly 41 years after the three men were killed, a racially integrated jury, without clear evidence of Killen's intent, found him guilty of manslaughter instead. Serving three consecutive 20-year terms, he is the only one of six living suspects to face state charges in the case.
Ben Chaney sees it this way: somewhere out there are men like him—accomplices to murder. He did his time, he says, they should do theirs. "I'm not as sad as I was," he adds. "But I'm still angry."
Hank Klibanoff is the author, with Gene Roberts, of The Race Beat, which received the Pulitzer Prize for history last year.
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Comments (6)
God is good!!!!
Posted by ThereIsAGod on February 17,2013 | 06:22 PM
While this story interests me it also troubles me that modern Mississippi still suffers from the ghosts of the past. I and many like me, were born and raised in a state that is seemingly forever punished for these misdeeds. Why should I be punished for the actions of these few? Please remember that my generation had no connection to these crimes. Punishing or making fun of Mississippi and the south in general is similar to being racist and should not be tolerated.
Posted by steve labiche on June 20,2011 | 03:02 PM
I am ashamed to be white. U.S. history is overflowing with stories of injustice and brutality that whites inflicted upon Native (including Hispanic), African and Asian Americans. Surely the broad white stripes of our flag represent white-wash, while the equally broad red stripes represent blood-shed caused by our constant fighting. We are not "United" States, but instead are a house divided against itself. Shall we not join together to rebuild a truly just nation? Will we continue toward self-destruction until we completely destroy ourselves and our future?
Posted by mary beth romeo on February 1,2010 | 03:56 PM
I am 58yrs old and was born and raised in NY all my life, my parents both left the south NC and Mississippi. At a young age my mother made a comment to me ie, "I left the south and will never go back." To this day she has not returned. I grew older around 12 yrs old I watched the news and saw events of things that were going on in the south. I thought it was cruel the way people were being treated and was glad I did not live there, I also felt sorry for the people living in the south. Some things have changed but not all. After serving 16yrs on active duty with US Army and 3yrs reserve duty I now live in North Carolina which was my Father's birth place. Some people in the south will never change, this I know first hand from living here since 1993. I am proud to see the first African American President elected and I'm sure he will be one of our greatest, but unfortunetly he can not change what is in anyones heart.
Posted by Dolores B Goode on January 4,2009 | 06:09 PM
I moved to Meridian when I was 15 from California--father was in the Navy--James Chaney was one that inspired me to be a social workers. When I received Social Worker of the year in Louisiana in 2000, I quoted the phrase from his often vandalized tomb. Hopefully, Obama will bring some final healing for this phase in our country's history.
Posted by Jane Hyde,LCSW on December 22,2008 | 05:34 PM
I'm a white soon to be 69 on Monday. I was married with 2 sons & as soon as I heard my first thought was that they were dead. The Mississippi State government should be ashamed By their inaction for 44 years. We as a society can not afford to minimalize any group of citizen's. Think how much we can effect those around us for the bettermentof us all.
Posted by Jon (Skip) Faulkner on December 6,2008 | 04:21 PM
I've emailed this article to 2 long time friends. The more things change, the more they remain the same in this country. Had not a powerful white boy (ex-attorney general for the US Ramsey Clark) intervened, Ben Chaney would still be in jail while white amerikkkan murderers continue(d) to go free. The Obama election means something but it does NOT MEAN justice & freedom truly exist in this country. I was 3rd year in high school in 1964 and have never forgotten this.
Posted by Shani Bakuba on November 26,2008 | 07:45 AM