Aug. 7, 1964 - James Chaney was buried today on a sandy hill 3½ miles south of Meridian, Miss.
An hour later, hundreds of Negroes poured out their bitterness in a memorial service in which both the state and Federal Governments were blamed for the death of the 21-year-old civil rights worker.
David Dennis, an assistant program director for the Mississippi Summer Project, set the tone for the meeting when he said:
“I believe the people in Washington and Jackson are just as much to blame for this death as the people who pulled the trigger.”
Dennis is a field worker for the Congress of Racial Equality. He told his audience: “I’ve got bitterness in my heart. I’m not going to ask you not to be bitter either tonight.”
Shaking the pulpit in anger, Dennis said, “I know what is going to happen when they find those men. A jury will come in and say, ‘Not guilty.’”
Chaney was one of three civil rights workers whose bodies were found Tuesday under the dam of a farm pond five miles south of Philadelphia, Miss.
The Meridian Negro had been a member of the CORE staff and had gone to Philadelphia on June 21 with two other civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, 24, and Andrew Goodman, 20, both white, to investigate the burning of a Negro church.
During the service, the victim’s mother, Mrs. Fannie Lee Chaney (right), and other relatives sobbed in the first row. About 500 Negroes crowded into the church, and others filled the doorways.
The Rev. Edwin King, Methodist chaplain at Tougaloo College in Jackson and a leader in the civil rights project, told the crowd, “I’m glad Dennis got angry tonight.”
But he warned: “Our hatred should be aimed at destroying the system, not the individuals.”
After the ceremony, Mrs. Chaney and her daughters, Barbara Chaney Moss, Julia Chaney, and Janie Chaney, broke into sobs.
The victim’s younger brother, 12-year-old Ben (left), cried: “I want my brother! I want my brother!”
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