Mt. Zion to hold annual memorial
The annual Mt. Zion memorial service for three young men murdered here by the Ku Klux Klan nearly six decades ago registering blacks to vote is set for this weekend and will include an address from a state senator.
The Mt. Zion United Methodist Church congregation will hold its 59th Commemoration Service remembering James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner on Sunday, June 18, at 3 p.m., chairwoman Jewel McDonald said. The theme is “Faith Walking in 2023.”
“We hold the event every Father’s Day for them to make sure we never forget,” McDonald said.
The speaker this year will be Democrat State Senator Rod Hickman of Kemper County, she said.
This will be Rev. Eddie Hinton’s first year overseeing the event. McDonald said he came to the church last July shortly after the annual memorial.
In addition, Dr. Julia Riley has put together a youth program. Kids from Mt. Zion, Hopewell United Methodist Church, Stevens Chapel United Methodist Church and Prairie Chapel United Methodist Church will sing, McDonald said.
The young men, James Chaney, 21, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24, were in Neshoba County to investigate the June 16, 1964, burning of the Mt. Zion church set ablaze by the Ku Klux Klan.
Several members of the church such as the now late Bud Cole were severely beaten the night of the fire by a hooded mob that included law enforcement as members left a church meeting.
McDonald said she remembers that evening. She had just turned 18 at the time and was left at home to babysit her niece. McDonald remembers her mother, the late Georgia Rush, and brother, the late John Thomas “J.T.” Rush, Jr., came home late from the church meeting bloody and beaten.
“It was a sad thing,” she said. “They burnt that church to the pillars.”
The trio, leaving the church on Father’s Day June 21 headed back through town to their headquarters in Meridian, was stopped on Main Street in front of the Methodist church and arrested on trumped-up speeding charges. They were detained in the Neshoba County Jail until nightfall.
They were released and, as they traveled down Highway 19 south, ambushed at House by a gang of Klansmen that also included law enforcement. They were taken to a nearby remote county road and shot to death at point-blank range.
Their bodies were found 44 days later buried in an earthen dam not far from the murder site following one of the most extensive federal searches in history.
The murders went unprosecuted for 40 years until a multi-ethnic group of Neshoba countians led a community-wide call for justice endorsed by local business and political leaders, among others.
A Neshoba County grand jury indicted Edgar Ray Killen in 2005 and he was later convicted and sentenced to a 60-year prison term for arranging the murders. He died at Parchman Prison in January 2018. Killen was 92.