In the summer of 1964 three young men, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman campaigned in Neshoba County Mississippi to register, educate and inform African-American in their right to vote. Their volunteer efforts were part of the civil rights movement taking place that summer known as the Freedom Rides, and/or Freedom Summer.
Chaney then a 21 year-old African American from Meridian, Mississippi, Andrew Goodman a 20 year-old Anthropology student from New York, and Michael Schwerner, also from New York, a 24 year-old social worker and CORE (Congress on Racial Equality) organizer.
It was during this summer that the three young Civil Rights workers were slain by members of the Ku Klux Klan with the assistance of the local police authorities.
Their disappearance and loss spread quickly throughout the country and an immediate investigation was called by the FBI. Their loss of life galvanized the country and was pivotal in the creation and passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Above is Carolyn Goodman the mother of slain civil rights advocate Andrew Goodman, with an unidentified woman during a memorial to the Freedom Rides, Freedom Summer and the lives of the Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner.
In 1988 the film Mississippi Burning was released.
Photographs from this freelance assignment were recorded on color negative film, published in the Washington Post and will be featured in my upcoming exhibit, "Women's Empowerment: A Global Perspective." Photographs are copyright Ana Elisa Fuentes, and are maintained in my personal archive
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