The Medal of Freedom...Finally!

[sheshe2]

At a ceremony on November 24th at the White House, President Obama will award the Medal of Freedom (posthumously) to Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney...finally!

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner (posthumous)
James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were civil rights activists and participants in “Freedom Summer,” an historic voter registration drive in 1964. As African Americans were systematically being blocked from voter rolls, Mr. Chaney, Mr. Goodman, and Mr. Schwerner joined hundreds of others working to register black voters in Mississippi. They were murdered at the outset of Freedom Summer. Their deaths shocked the nation and their efforts helped to inspire many of the landmark civil rights advancements that followed.

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[shenmue]

1. ...

[sheshe2]

2. Yes~

[sheshe2]

3. More~

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Steven Greenhouse @greenhousenyt
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President Obama awards posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom to civil rights heroes Goodman Chaney, & Schwerner.
9:42 PM - 10 Nov 2014

:small
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Michele Norris ✔ @michele_norris
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On Veterans Day also impt to remember veterans who could wear the uniform but could not vote
8:26 AM - 11 Nov 2014


http://theobamadiary.com/

[Cha]

4. These 3 beautiful people died for the Right to Vote.. so appreciative that Pres Obama is Awarding

them the Medal of Freedom Posthumously, she. They were truly Martyrs for the Civil Rights Movement



Michele Norris ✔ @michele_norris
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On Veterans Day also impt to remember veterans who could wear the uniform but could not vote
3:26 AM - 11 Nov 2014 406 Retweets 251 favorites

http://theobamadiary.com/2014/11/11/a-tweet-or-two-166/

Thank you she

[sheshe2]

6. They were truly Martyrs for the Civil Rights Movement, yes they were Cha.

I found out on Monday at the funeral home that my dad will be honored by the navy at his graveside service. Two members will be present and play taps and present the flag.

[Cha]

9. That's will be so poignant, she..

[Raine1967]

5. Deserved, well deserved. They are heroes.

They gave their lives for this country.

[sheshe2]

7. Yes they did Raine and it is long past due.

Thanks~

[Stallion]

8. I Predict Some Mississippi Republican Will Cry

"Its like waving a Red Flag in front of the State of Mississippi"

"Obama is poisoning the well with Mississippi"

[LeftInTX]

10. Way overdue

[KMOD]

11. Mississippi Burning

[img]1964-06-21-postcard.jpg[/img]

The postcard looks ordinary enough. It's a message written from a 20-year-old to his parents, informing them that he'd arrived safely in Meridian, Mississippi for a summer job.

"This is a wonderful town and the weather is fine. I wish you were here," Andrew Goodman wrote to his mom and dad back in New York City. "The people in this city are wonderful and our reception was very good. All my love, Andy."

The card was postmarked June 21, 1964. That was the day Andy Goodman was murdered.


Fifty years have passed since Goodman and two other civil rights workers, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, were ambushed and shot dead by the Ku Klux Klan in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Their bodies were found buried in an earthen damn in rural Neshoba County - 44 days after they went missing.

The three young men had been volunteering for a "Freedom Summer" campaign to register African-American voters. Their efforts helped pave the way for the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act in 1965 and their murders were dramatized in the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mississippi-burning-murders-resonate-50-years-later/


Way overdue.

[freshwest]

17. Thanks for the link. It gives some details I'd never heard before and this picture:

The truth will out and out and out again. How much more does it take?

The people who burned down those black churches would be the same as those complaining about the war on Christmas now.

And don't even get me started on the little girls in the church that were taken from the Earth too soon.

Sick.

[KMOD]

34. my pleasure.

And yes, it's sick!

[lovemydog]

12. They were helping people register to vote.

Their vicious murders helped more people get the right to vote. True heroes worthy of the Medal of Freedom.

Freedom to vote - use it or lose it.

[scarletwoman]

13. Never forget - Philadelphia, MS was Reagan's first stop on his 1980 election campaign:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/opinion/13herbert.html?_r=0

<snip>

The murders were among the most notorious in American history. They constituted Neshoba County’s primary claim to fame when Reagan won the Republican Party’s nomination for president in 1980. The case was still a festering sore at that time. Some of the conspirators were still being protected by the local community. And white supremacy was still the order of the day.

That was the atmosphere and that was the place that Reagan chose as the first stop in his general election campaign. The campaign debuted at the Neshoba County Fair in front of a white and, at times, raucous crowd of perhaps 10,000, chanting: “We want Reagan! We want Reagan!”

Reagan was the first presidential candidate ever to appear at the fair, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he told that crowd, “I believe in states’ rights.”

<snip>

Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.

He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about “states’ rights” to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you.

(more at link)

[mountain grammy]

14. Yes, never forget, not only Philadelphia, for it was only one place..

The KKK reigned terror on African Americans all over the south. The KKK was America's ISIS, but nobody cared. This is not an over the top comparison.

[mountain grammy]

15. They deserve it, but more than that, they deserved to live.

[sheshe2]

16. Yes mountain grammy,

they did deserve to live.

[William769]

25. + till the end of time.

[freshwest]

18. I saw a video of Robert Reich, weeping after all these years, about one of them:

As a boy, Schwerner befriended Robert Reich who later became U.S. Secretary of Labor, serving as his protector against bullies...

(Schwerner)... "He was described by family and friends as friendly, good-natured, gentle, mischievous, and 'full of life and ideas'. He believed all people were essentially good. He named his cocker spaniel 'Ghandhi' [sic]. He loved sports, animals, poker, W.C. Fields, and rock music..."[7][3]


Memorial to the victims of the Mississippi civil rights workers murders - Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney, and Michael Schwerner - Mt. Nebo Missionary Baptist Church, Philadelphia, Mississippi.

We should never forget the hearts of all three of these men, true American heroes.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Schwerner

[sheshe2]

20. He was~

(Schwerner)... "He was described by family and friends as friendly, good-natured, gentle, mischievous, and 'full of life and ideas'. He believed all people were essentially good. He named his cocker spaniel 'Ghandhi' . He loved sports, animals, poker, W.C. Fields, and rock music..."

Tears~it seems I have a lot these days, freshwest.

[William769]

19. A long time coming.

[sheshe2]

22. So true

Hey you...

[William769]

24. I will be full time again in the morning.

Will be making some major changes. I got back about an hour ago.

You did some great work while I was gone. Thank you.

[sheshe2]

28. Damn I missed you!

I tried to keep the light on~ where there is light then there is hope. Thanks William, I tried.



Having a hard time tonight.

[William769]

30. Just call my name...

[sheshe2]

31. Thank you~ I will do just that.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

21. Pathetic that it's taken this long.

[FailureToCommunicate]

23. Freedom Summer victims...like it was yesterday...

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/06YCqfPwV08" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[Thinkingabout]

26. Here was three young mrn, they gave their lives trying to get the right of

All citizens to vote. It makes the voter turnout in 2014 pathetic. The whiners complain, don't vote and they have not given their lives to be able to vote.

[sheshe2]

29. What you just said Thinkingabout!!!!

You got that so damn right!

[Iliyah]

27. K & R!

[sheshe2]

32. Kick

[sheshe2]

33. Kick

[msanthrope]

35. Kick. nt

[Scuba]

36. K&R

[Fly by night]

37. I grew up less than an hour from these murders

I had just turned 15 in 1964 when the bodies were discovered. In that Mississippi burning time, my best friend's mother -- a gentile and proper Southern aristocrat -- did something that impressed me more than almost anything I have ever witnessed. I wrote about it here. This IPhone won't let me copy the link so I hope someone here will find the link to "Why we can: Memories of my second mother" in the DU archives and include it in this thread. It is an excerpt from a longer remembrance that was published in my Possum Town, MS paper when she died several years ago at the age of 98. I was asked to read it at her funeral.

Two women --as different as night and day -- defined moral courage for me in that dark time; Miz Fannie Lou Hamer and Miz Lilla Pratt Rosamond. Thanks in advance to whoever copies the link here to Miz Lilla's response to these murders.

[sheshe2]

38. Got it!

Memories of my second mother

Over the past few months, I am sure many of us are assessing just what Barack Obama's election says about our nation's racial progress, regardless of whether or not we voted for him. President Obama has often recognized and honored those Black leaders in our nation's history who paved the way for this day. I want to take a minute to share with you a little story that shows that the way was also paved by the strength, kindness and moral compass of many unknown and unnamed white Southerners. People like my second mother, Mrs. Lilla Rosamond of Columbus, Mississippi, who died last month at the age of 98.

I've been thinking about Miz Lilla ever since I learned of her death. There are so many good things I can say about her and her family. Miz Lilla was born into one of the more prominent families in north-east Mississippi, a family wealthy enough to have both an in-town mansion and a country plantation. Unlike many who are born to privilege, however, Miz Lilla's family was also wealthy for its willingness to serve their community and to help those who couldn't help themselves. Her forebears (great-grandparents or beyond) donated the land for the first public school in Mississippi for my hometown. That school, Franklin Academy, still stands open directly across the street from Franklin Square, their beautiful antebellum home. Miz Lilla's father almost single-handedly funded our small town's YMCAs (both Black and White) and donated the land for their summer camp on the banks of the Tombigbee river, a camp that still exists in the hazy summertime memories of many, including me. So public service was nothing new to this privileged daughter of the antebellum South. But one of my first exposures to her still remains one of my most lasting impressions and one of the best examples of what quiet courage looks like.

Back in the mid 60s, when I first met her son Bill (who would become one of my best friends), I was invited to eat lunch at their mansion, a very formal affair with a butler bringing each course. During lunch, Miz Lilla called her house staff (all Black) into the dining room and asked them, one by one, whether they were registered to vote yet in the upcoming election. There were several who said (timidly) that they had not yet registered, which (in retrospect) should have not been surprising given the risk to employment, life and limb that greeted most Black folks who tried to vote in those Mississippi burning days.

So, after lunch, Miz Lilla walked the few blocks to the courthouse with those house staff who were not yet registered and stood beside each one of them as they completed the paperwork necessary to exercise their franchise. Through her silent, unyielding (and very Southern aristocratic) presence, Miz Lilla was determined to prevent any barriers to full participation in the democratic process being imposed on people who she knew and cared for, some of whom from families that had served her own family for generations. As a result, neither she nor her Black house staff got so much as a peep out of the local election registrar that day. A few weeks later, I believe she also accompanied her staff as they went to vote, most for the first time in their lives.

Back then, my young, naive self thought that Miz Lilla's actions were intrusive or, at the least, patronizing. Of course, as a young White son of another long-time local family, I was pretty clueless then to the real (and too often fatal) risks that Blacks faced trying to vote in my hometown, which was less than an hour away from where Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney, three young civil rights workers, had just been murdered, their bodies buried as back-fill in a farm pond dam. Thinking back on it now, I realize that Miz Lilla was placing her own standing (and perhaps her own safety) in the community aside in favor of the greater good. Most folks would not have thought of her as a civil rights activist but, by those actions, Miz Lilla proved to be just the sort of person -- a moral, democratic matriarch -- that our nation had to have in order to break down Jim Crow laws and racist practices in Columbus, MS and throughout the South.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8201082

Thank you

[Fly by night]

39. Thanks kindly. Much appreciated.