Talk:Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner

Entire Mississippi Congressional delegation voted against 25th anniversary resolution?

Entire Mississippi Congressional delegation voted against 25th anniversary resolution? Under the section "Further research and 2005 murder trial" it says "Senator Trent Lott and the rest of the Mississippi delegation refused to vote for it." I would be very surprised if Mike Espy voted against the 1988 resolution. And very likely he was a cosponsor, if not a sponsor. Source is a 2007 Jackson Free Press article that doesn't even mention Espy. JEByron (talk) 16:15, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

The claim that these murders aided the passage of the Civil Rights of 1964 is more of an urban legend than a scientific fact

The Senate filibuster which stalled the law's passage ended 11 days before the murders.[1] The Civil Rights Act of 1964 would even pass the Senate on June 19, 1964, [2] the 99th anniversary of the abolition of slavery and two days before the murders as well. It can even be alleged that the law was intended to pass the Senate on present day Juneteenth. By this point in time, the House of Representatives didn't have a filibuster policy which could've stalled it beyond the 4th of July week when it was passed and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson; signing it two days before the 4th of July was perhaps intended too, with Johnson even hyping the 188th anniversary of July 4, 1776 in the speech where he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.[[[Special:Contributions/2601:449:4582:B3C0:9873:1E52:E25D:7CE0|2601:449:4582:B3C0:9873:1E52:E25D:7CE0] (talk) 21:43, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

The House didn't pass the bill until July 2, 1964, and President Johnson signed it into law the same day. The FBI says that "[t]he murders galvanized the nation and provided impetus for the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2". The FBI launched its investigation on June 22, 1964, the day after the activists were reported missing: By 11:30 p.m., [June 22, 1964,] the FBI had four agents in Neshoba County, all of them from the New Orleans office, with the United Press International news service soon reporting their arrival. ... Over the past decade, the murders of Emmett Till, George Lee, Mack Charles Parker, Herbert Lee, and Medgar Evers—for which there had been no convictions—had been front-page news and were still well known to the Justice Department. From June 24 to August 3, when the bodies of the murdered men were found, the FBI, the National Guard, and 400 U.S. sailors searched "backroads, swamps, and hollows". The Klansmen [had] bulldozed the three bodies into an earthen dam under 10 tons of dirt and went home, certain that proof of their crime would never be found. But they miscalculated. These civil rights workers were not like others who had been killed in the same cause - two of them were white. And because this is, as Schwerner's widow, Rita, has observed, a society that values some lives more highly than others, Washington politicians and New York journalists suddenly cared a great deal about the missing civil rights workers. The entire nation watched as F.B.I. agents fished a charred station wagon from a swamp, and, acting on a tip, found the three bodies 44 days after the men had disappeared. The disappearance and massive search were headline news while the House was debating and voting and may have influenced the votes, but I haven't found any other sources one way or the other. There are several RS, however, on the influence on the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Space4Time3Continuum2x🖖 11:51, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

References