By JOSH FOREMAN
Staff Reporter
Joy Porterfield remembers that morning in rural Neshoba County 41 years ago.
“It was just burnt, burnt to the ground,” she said. “That old wooden church.”
The day was June 17, 1964, one day after a gang of Klansmen had come to the all-black Mt. Zion United Methodist Church, beaten the members of the congregation and burned it to the ground.
“All I could see was the bell,” Porterfield said.
Sunday she and dozens of others were back at the church to commemorate the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. The three were investigating the burning of Mt. Zion less than a week after the crime when they were stopped in nearby Philadelphia. Later that night they were murdered as part of a plot carried out by the local Ku Klux Klan and members of local law enforcement.
The church commemorates the murders every year, but this year’s ceremony was especially significant. Closing arguments were Monday in the murder trial of former Klansman Edgar Ray Killen, who is being charged with the murder of the three workers. Killen is the first person to ever be tried by the state of Mississippi for the murders.
Leroy Clemons, co-chairman of the Philadelphia Coalition, a local group that advocated the prosecution of the murders, told the congregation of the small church that the prosecution of Killen is a hopeful sign for Neshoba countians, and long-awaited.
“Tomorrow that murderer is going to be found guilty,” Clemons said. “Justice is going to speak loud and clear: guilty, guilty, guilty.”
Killen’s defense has maintained that he was not present when the murders occurred, and shouldn’t be found guilty of murder.
Clemons also said that the three civil rights workers’ murders had sparked a resolve within the local and national civil rights movement.
“What’s really moving about that moment is that the Klan and the state government thought that by putting those men’s lights out they could stop the movement,” he said. “But instead it spread the light.”
The church bell that Porterfield remembers — the only part of the church left standing after the burning — is still there today, covered in thick white paint. Just beside it a granite monument to Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman stands on the red, sandy soil.
“This memorial is prayerfully and proudly dedicated to the memory of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner,” the memorial reads, “who gave their life in the struggle to obtain human rights for all people.”
Rita Bender, Schwerner’s widow, told the congregation after the ceremony that it was important to understand the racial climate in Mississippi in the 1960s. “I think it’s important that we seek to understand how a government became complicit in terror and how good people looked aside and let it happen,” Bender said. “Governments can run amok again.”
Outside the building Bender, who traveled with her husband to Meridian, Miss. in 1964 to register blacks to vote, greeted the Rev. Clinton Collier, one of the most involved civil rights activists of Neshoba County in the 1960s.
“Hello beautiful,” Collier said, hugging Bender. “Hello, hello, my God hello. I remember the first time I saw you.”
