Sixty years ago, on this day, June 21st, 1964,
Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner, are murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, United States, by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that black people had been resisting Jim Crow (the name given to the apartheid system in the Southern United States) as best they could, since its inception. But the “massive resistance” of the Southern States was only going to be broken with outside help – both the Federal Government and brave brave people trying to desegregate schools, buses etc.
The specific context was that Ella Baker had managed to protect students and young black people from being swallowed up into other people’s campaigns, and so the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed. It had had some success with education/outreach/voter registration, but decided (it was a contentious issue) that it needed more (Northern) hands on deck and so began the “Freedom Summer” in 1964, where white and black volunteers from the North would join those efforts. At the very beginning of that summer, these three volunteers were murdered.
What I think we can learn from this is that the defenders of the status quo are perfectly okay with murder to defend that status quo. Change costs lives.
What happened next The Freedom Summer happened. It opened an enormous can of worms, and second wave feminism, queer rights, ecology movements sprang from the ferment of the second half of the sixties. The Black Civil Rights Movement was the initiator movement, in academic terms.
Oh, and on August 3 1980 Republican candidate Ronald Reagan gave a “states rights” speech in Neshoba County. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, dog whistle, dog whistle.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day: