Aug. 5, 1964 - As the last “hope, slim thought it was, has passed away and a painful certainty has come,” the anguished parents of the three civil rights workers slain in Mississippi expressed great pride today in their sons’ courage and unshaken faith in the cause for which they died.
Far from the makeshift grave of their son, the parents of 20-year-old Andrew Goodman, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Goodman, gave a press conference at their apartment on W. 86th St. With deep emotion, the tearful father said, “Our grief, though personal, belongs to the nation. This tragedy is not private. It is part of the public conscience of our country.”
From Vermont, where the news of the tragedy reached the vacationing parents of Michael Schwerner, 25, Mr. and Mrs. Schwerner sent word today that they will carry through with a plan to speak this Sunday at a civil rights rally to be held at 2 p.m. in Nassau County’s Salisbury Park, Westbury. A close family friend, Louis Cottin of Westbury, said that the first week of the long wait for news had “almost destroyed” the Schwerners. But, he said, the lessening of their hope had strengthened their dedication to the civil rights cause. Rita Schwerner, widow of Michael Schwerner, said she hoped “the work that Mickey, Andy, and James [Chaney] were engaged in will not only continue but that the efforts to liberate the Negroes of Mississippi in particular and of the South in general from the consistent and brutal violation of their civil rights will redouble.”
In Meridian, Miss., Mrs. Fannie Lee Chaney, mother of the 21-year-old Negro victim, James Chaney, was not available for comment today. A CORE spokesman said that she too had long ago lost hope for the survival of her son, but remained strong in her devotion to his cause.
Meanwhile, the FBI stepped up its hunt today for the killers of the three rights workers amid unconfirmed reports that several arrests were imminent.
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