Philadelphia elected James A. Young, an African American minister of the Pentecostal Church, as its first black mayor. He defeated the white incumbent in the Democratic primary. There was no Republican challenger.
Civil-Rights Murders of 1964
Nearly forty-five years earlier, on June 21, 1964, white citizens of Philadelphia’s Neshoba County murdered three civil-rights activists and buried them in an earthen dam near Philadelphia. The state of Mississippi did not prosecute, but in 1967, seven of 18 defendants were convicted on federal conspiracy charges. None served more than six years. In 2005, 41 years after the murders, the state convicted former Klansman Edgar Ray Killen, then 80, on manslaughter charges. He received three consecutive 20-year sentences.
Young’s election by a town that is 56 percent white proved that whites and blacks are a lot friendlier today than they were in 1964.
Beatings and Burnings at Black Church
On June 16 of that year, a band of Ku Klux Klan members surrounded Mount Zion United Methodist Church, about 12 miles outside Philadelphia. They beat up 10 of its members and burned the building to the ground. They were looking for Michael Schwerner, a Jewish civil-rights worker from New York, and James Chaney, a black Mississippi civil-rights activist. The church had been the center of voting-rights activities.
Five days later, Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, arrested Chaney, Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, a New Yorker who had joined their cause. They were released under $20 bond. As they left town, they were abducted and shot.
A Daughter Remembers the Aftermath
More than 35 years later, Matilda Kirkland related to this writer her memories of June 16. She recalled awakening to hear her adoptive mother crying as she and her husband, J. R. Cole, returned from a business meeting at Mount Zion church.
At breakfast the next morning, she saw that her adoptive father’s face was "all swollen" from the beating he had taken.
Prayer Nudges a Conscience
The shadow of a conscience in one of the assailants may have spared Cole's life. Kirkland said her mother remembered asking the Klansmen whether she could pray as they beat him.
"If it will help you, pray," he replied. And as she went to her knees and begged Heaven for help, the Klansman told his henchmen: "Let him live."
The Glacial Pace of Justice
After the trial of 1967, it appeared that the other perpetrators of 1964 would go permanently unpunished. Mississippi Attorney General Michael Moore re-opened the case in 1999, but he faced the daunting problem of dying witnesses and dimming memories. The FBI turned over to the state more than 40,000 files pertaining to the case, but by the time Killen was convicted, no one else was alive to be held responsible for the murders.
But even before his convictions, Philadelphians were noting a change.
“Most people are a lot more courteous, more polite," said Jimmie McDonald, interviewed at a memorial service at the rebuilt church in 2002. "Most try their best to consider our feelings." His mother, Georgia Rush, was among those beaten on June 16, 1964.
"James Chaney said someone may have to die for change to come," said the Rev. John Steele, one of the memorial speakers in 2002.
Chaney died, and change came. The election of James Young as mayor is a ringing signal of that change.
