We Are Not Afraid: The Story of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, and the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi [Paperback]

Seth Cagin (Author), Philip Dray (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 26, 2006

We Are Not Afraid is the story of the 1964 killing of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in Philadelphia, Mississippi, at the hands of Ku Klux Klansmen and the local cops. Described as "one of the best books on the civil rights movement," the murders it describes inspired the acclaimed film, Mississippi Burning. The events surrounding this seminal event have re-entered public debate due to the recent conviction of manslaughter by Klansman and Imperial Wizard, Edgar Ray Killen, for his part in orchestrating the murders. As America struggles to honestly confront its history of racism, there has never been a more timely moment to reissue this fully updated edition of We Are Not Afraid. From the roles played by such figures as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy to the remarkable courage of the Freedom Riders, this book relates the definitive story of a nation's ongoing battle for true democracy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The infamous murder of three civil rights workers by a Ku Klux Klan mob and Mississippi law-enforcement officers in 1964 takes on the dimensions of a personal, political and national tragedy in this riveting account. The drama of the triocollege students Michael Schwerner and Andy Goodman, both white Northerners, and James Chaney, a young black activist from Mississippipits their faith in nonviolence against a murderous rage fueled by racism. Cagin and Dray, who coauthored Hollywood Films of the Seventies, have done their homework: interviews, news reports, FBI documents and trial transcripts undergird their brilliant re-creation of the incident, interwoven with a full-scale history of the civil rights movement. The search for the bodies turned up many black corpses, purported victims of police/Klan violence; the Klan conspirators were paroled before serving their full sentences; in the aftermath, Lyndon Johnson questionably maneuvered to defuse the situation. This is surely one of the best books on the civil rights movement.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

A richly detailed morality tale set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement of the early 1960s, this account pits idealistic and courageous civil rights workers against violent and bigoted defenders of segregation. As the central tragedythe murders of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaneyunfolds, federal officials ultimately bring the perpetrators to justice. In spite of its obvious bias and a tendency toward melodrama, this is a fine work by two freelance journalists: the most exhaustively researched, eloquently written, and accessible account of this crucial episode. Exciting and inspiring; highly recommended for most libraries.Anthony O. Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, Ind.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 500 pages
• Publisher: Nation Books; Revised edition (April 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560258640
• ISBN-13: 978-1560258643
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.6 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #624,984 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Thorough and riveting December 6, 2000

By Schmerguls VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Every so often we need to refresh our memory of the bad things that happened in our lifetime. That is why I read books about the Holocaust. It is also why I read this book, telling of what Mississippi was like for black people in the early 1960s. The murder of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney on June 21, 1964, is a defining event in the struggle to bring Mississippi to greater respect for the basic liberties guaranteed to Americans. This book tells the story in some detail, and also covers other events leading up to the murders. And there are some pages telling what has happened since (up to 1988, when the book was published). Very worthwhile and carefully done.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Read July 4, 2004

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Even if you already know the story of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, this book is very detailed and interestingly put together. The background information on the freedom summer project and other activists is insightful, and this book reads like a story, and not just as boring facts. I recommend this book to everyone.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Mississippi's and America's Shame July 20, 2009

By C. W. Emblom

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a story of domestic terrorism. In this book we have domestic terrorists posing as police officers, another as a preacher, and other assorted riff-raff making up the police state of Mississippi during the 1960s. I was a college student when the shameful execution of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney took place on June 21, 1964. It's true that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. These three men paid the ultimate price trying to get African Americans registered to vote in Mississippi. To be sure, Mississippi wasn't alone in denying African American citizens their basic civil rights. The authors of this book point out the denial of civil rights in other states as well, namely neighboring Alabama.
Don't be intimidated by the books length, 457 pages. This book is a riveting read exposing Mississippi's as well as America's shame in regard to civil rights. The 1960s was a violent decade marked by political assassinations, the struggle for civil rights for African Americans, race riots, and the Vietnam war. Other than the three gentlemen who grace the cover of this book I feel another hero in the book is President Lyndon Johnson for pushing for passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. American history is filled with events we would like to sweep under the carpet. This book exposes the difficulties African Americans have confronted in gaining their much-deserved equal status in American society. It isn't enough to be embarrassed after reading this book, we, as Americans, need to feel shame and disgust.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Lesson In American History August 10, 2008

By S. Glick

Format:Paperback

This book gives an excellent account of what life was like in the South during the fight for Civil Rights. I was familiar with the case of the Freedom Summer Civil Rights Activist being murdered in Mississippi. This book goes into great detail about that case and other things that were taking place in the Civil Rights Movement at the time. I think this is book is a must read for anyone interested in the Civil Rights Struggle. I felt as if I were there watching the events as the unfolded. They really did their homework for this. It's a great tribute the Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman and all the others who worked along side them to change ideology of the Deep South during this time.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Read This Book Now; Case Re-Opened December 8, 2009

By Susan Klopfer

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

If you don't know this story, you will be reading more about it in upcoming days. So now is the time to get an account of what happened back in 1964 by reading We Are Not Afraid, the most interesting and most complete book written about this cold case that I have read. Three young men, civil rights volunteers, were brutally murdered at the opening of Freedom Summer. And now, 45 years later, the FBI is reopening the case, looking for new leads that could identify new suspects. James Chaney was one of the men murdered. A medical expert who viewed his autopsy photos thinks his body still contains important evidence and wants the FBI to exhume it for reexamination. The expert claims there are two bullets still in Chaney's body that were never removed. Recently it was learned that Edgar Ray Killen, the only man sent to prison for the triple murder, admitted to his former cell mate that he buried evidence from the crime on his property, back in the 1960s. His property has never been searched. When I first read Cagin and Dray's remarkable book, I felt as if I were there in Mississippi--a silent observer to an atrocity that must be remembered and retold. Once I picked up this book and started reading, I could not put it down.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars America Burning May 23, 2012

By R. L. Huff

Format:Paperback

Of all the books on this brutal story, Cagin and Dray's remains the most in-depth forensic analysis of that sad Midsummer Day of 1964. The aftermath of this sordid murder galvanized the nation and was one of the top events of the entire movement, along with the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, in 1963; the assassination of Medger Evers; and M.L. King's own assassination in 1968. Of interest is how the authors tied the events of a local lynching into broader trends. The Free Speech and anti-war movement, founded at Berkeley later that year, owed its origin to Freedom Summer activist Mario Savio (and this is a clue as to why no comparable anti-war movement has arisen since in the United States.)

The inspiration of sending students into the heartland was, of course, the "going to the people" of the Russian Peoples' Will movement a century before. With the escalation of violence all through the south, these students from elite universities found they had even less civil protection than their predecessors in Tzarist Russia. Ironically, while the backlash - and this tragedy in particular - sparked a revolutionary wave at the grass roots, it also levered the establishment political machinery into both domestic action, and to aid an escalating Vietnam War.

The Kennedy Administration still hoped to "balance" the party's civil rights rhetoric with its practical need of the Solid South to stay in power. Johnson, being a southern insider, was in the better position to influence Democratic senators and governors to see things his way, in passing and enforcing civil rights laws.... And prosecuting (not convicting) the perpetrators in the FBI's "Mississippi Burning" case was a demonstration to newly-emerged Afro-Asian nations that the US was "serious about its commitment to democracy" both at home and in Vietnam.

However "unreconstructed" the Deep South was at this time, I see little difference between the actions of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and other contemporary thuggery, like anti-union violence in the Ohio Valley coalfields, or the CIA's "wet" Phoenix Program in Vietnam; or the chanting - not only by southerners - some six years later, of "the Kent State Four - it should have been more." Mississippi's legacy of violence was by no means some freak eruption of an isolated backward province, but resonant of attitudes and values throughout American culture.

I also looked for evidence of local folklore surrounding this incident: like the gruesome story that Chaney's genitals had been severed, and orally inserted into either Goodman's or Schwerner's corpse. None of that emerges in this account, and likely would have were this story valid. Interesting also was the authors' brief mention of another local legend - the mulatto Burns family, so ashamed of their biracial heritage that all its children took "vows" of celibacy to preserve Neshoba County from their own genetic "impurity." There's Anti-Natalism with a vengeance!

But this accounting should seriously remind us, in an age of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, the militarization of the state, the strip-tease of basic civil rights (including one's clothes in police custody), that we cannot take these rights for granted. No "occupy" movement will create lasting change unless it can produce young people like these, with the courage to challenge power and take their convictions all the way. Read more ›