James Chaney
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James Earl Chaney (May 30, 1943 – June 21, 1964) was a civil rights worker who was murdered (along with Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman) by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Chaney was born in the town of Meridian, Mississippi. He had joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1963, and was age twenty-one when he was killed.
Chaney's murder occurred near the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Chaney was undertaking field work for CORE.
The three (Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman) were initially arrested by Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price for an alleged traffic violation and taken to the jail in Neshoba County. They were released that evening and on the way back to Meridian were stopped by two carloads of KKK members on a remote rural road. The men approached their car and then shot and killed Schwermer, then Goodman, and finally Chaney
The circumstances surrounding the death of the three activists were the subject of the film Mississippi Burning.
On January 7, 2005 Edgar Ray Killen, once an outspoken white supremacist nicknamed the "Preacher," pleaded "Not Guilty" to Chaney's murder, but was found guilty of manslaughter on June 20, 2005, and sentenced to sixty years in prison.
On August 4, 1980, Ronald Reagan launched his presidential election campaign with a speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi in which he declared his support for states' rights. Some critics saw his choice of Philadelphia as the launching point for his campaign as an attempt to further the Republican Party's southern strategy.