Sixty years ago today, on June 21, 1964, Andy Goodman, Mickey Schwerner, and James Chaney were brutally killed in what came to be known as the “Mississippi Burning” murders. Members of the Ku Klux Klan ambushed, abducted and shot them at point-blank range while they were working during the “Freedom Summer” to register disenfranchised African-Americans in Mississippi to vote. The murders galvanized the nation, ultimately leading to the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 .
Goodman and Schwerner, two young Jewish men from New York, along with Chaney, a Black civil rights activist from Mississippi, gave their lives together in the struggle for Black freedom. Buried in the riveting message that their camaraderie carried for the civil rights movement is another fact that might surprise some younger generations today. The largest manifestation of liberty and equality in America after independence was shaped by the alliance between the Black and Jewish communities, a partnership that has deteriorated sharply in recent times, particularly in the anti-Israel protests we witness today in so many American cities.
The bonds between the two communities are deeply organic. In his 1958 speech to the national convention of the American Jewish Congress , Dr. Martin Luther King eloquently captured this unity: “My people were brought to America in chains.
Your people were driven here to escape the chains fashioned for them in Europe. Our unity is born of our common struggle for centurie.
