Murder in Mississippi: United States V. Price and the Struggle for Civil Rights

Few episodes in the modern civil rights movement were more galvanizing or more memorialized than the brutal murders of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney -- idealists eager to protect and promote the rights of black Americans, even in the deep and very dangerous South. In films like Mississippi Burning and popular folk songs, these young men have been venerated as martyrs. Even so, the landmark legal dimensions of their murder case have until now remained largely lost. Murder in Mississippi provides a timely and telling reminder of the vigilance democracy requires if its ideals are to be fully realized.

Library Journal

An hour before midnight on June 21, 1964, Ku Klux Klansmen murdered civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James E. Chaney, and Andrew Goodman on Highway 19 outside Philadelphia, MS. Ball (Vermont Law Sch.) looks at the place and time fictionalized in the Oscar-winning film Mississippi Burning. Underscoring the frustrating irony of a nation reaching back to Civil War-era laws to protect civil rights workers nearly a century later, Ball deftly pivots the story on the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous 1966 decision in U.S. v. Price to overturn federal district court rulings dismissing indictments against 18 klansmen on counts stemming from the three murders. (In 1967, seven were convicted of conspiracy but none for murder-a state charge that Mississippi has steadfastly refused to pursue.) In time for the 40th anniversary of these infamous murders, this is another gem in the "Landmark Law Cases" series and deserves a place in any serious collection on U.S. history, law, civil rights, and race relations. Highly recommended.-Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.