MISSISSIPPI HORROR STORY
. By Evelyn.Sell
Americans. had a bitter experience during the paratrooper assault on Stanleyville. President Johnson called it "solely and simply a rescue mission." UN:Secretary General U Thant rubber- | stamped it with the assurance that it was "a purely humanitarian. measure. And at the same time, the news broke about last June's murder plot against three ‘young civil-rights workers in the state of Mississippi.
For example, the November 28 Detroit Free Press carried an article reciting such things as. the. "throat slitting of the nuns and an undisclosed number of Dutch. priests. ... a bloodbath against all whites. . . The bodies [of 45 Europeans] were found mutilated beyond recognition, and in several.cases cannibalism was suspected,'
On the very same front. page, “whare these allegations -- which | sound so much like atrocity propaganda -- appeared, another article carried the title: "Mississippi Horror Story: A Doctor's Report,"
This was written by Dr. David. Spain, ‘e@linical professor of pathology at New York Downstate Medical Center. He was called down to Mississippi by Dr. Charles Goodrich, a member of the Medical Committee for Human Rights which was organized to aid civil-rights workers in the South. The bodies of three young civil-rights workers, missing since June 21, had finally been found in August and the families of two of the victims wanted an expert pathologist at the autopsy as an independent observer, .
-Local authorities refused. to allow independent observers and. tried to block any examinations after the official one. With the help of ‘the Lawyers! Constitutional. Defense Committee (organized to. give legal aid to southern Negroes) and the courageous insistence of Mrs. Chaney, the mother of the Negro victim, Dr. Spain was at last able to examine the body of 2l-year-old James Chaney. (As a result of her determination to reveal the truth about the triple murder, Mrs, Chaney's home was bombed and shot into shortly after . she oa the papers requesting Dr. Spain's examination of her son's body.
oo Dr. Spain had already. read the reports about the official examination, "But the report just didn't make good medical sense to.me.. The statements that the bodies were badly decomposed and that there was no evidence of mutilation or other injury were con= tradictory -- if the bodies were badly decomposed, it would be extremely unlikely that an official determination could be made as to the extent of bodily injuries." a His examination confirmed his suspicion that the official ‘report was false. He examined the frail boy's wrist. "The wrist
was broken," the doctor wrote, ". . . bones were smashed so badly that his wrist must have been literally flapping when he was carried - - « Then I noticed Chaney's jaw. It was broken -- the lower. jaw was completely shattered, split vertically, from some tremendous force, . . I carefully examined the body, and found that the bones in the right shoulder were crushed -- again, from some strong and, direct blow. . . this frail boy had been beaten in an inhuman fashion. The blows that had so terribly shattered his bones -~- I sur mised he must have been beaten with chains, or a pipe -- were in themselves sufficient to cause death. . . It was obvious to any first-year medical student that this boy had been beaten to a pulp."
The story of the triple murder was reconstructed by noted. - Negro.author Louis Lomax who gathered his material from light-skinned Negroes who had infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan. Lomax wrote: "Chaney is tied to a tree and beaten with chains, His bones snap and-his ~:~ screams are soon ended. There is no noise now except for.the. thud of chains crushing flesh -- and the crack of ribs and bones," The other two civil-rights workers, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, break. from their captors who had forced them to watch the murder of their colleague. The two white students are clubbed and all three are later shot and buried, .
Five months after these murders the FBI, after great pressure from Negroes, finally charged 21 men with deliberately plotting and carrying out the triple murder. Almost all are members of the Ku Klux Klan. Three are officers of the law: Sheriff Rainey, Deputy Sheriff Price and-Patrolman Otha Neal. Burkes. On December 10 a U.S. Commissioner dismissed charges against 19 of these men on the grounds that«the- FBI. evidence (a signed confession by one of the plotters) was:"hearsay", and not sufficient evidence to hold the accused men. Charges against, the other two were later dropped as well. All 21 still face a grand jury hearing to determine whether they should be brought to trial.
The ‘fact that ‘three police officers were included in this group of murderers, is no surprise to anyone familiar with "law and order" in the south, While in Mississippi awaiting permission to examine Chaney's body, Dr. Spain ‘reports that he "browsed through.a. file of reports from field teams of the ‘Medical Committee for Human Rights, The.first report. described extended treatment given a young Negro civil-rights worker for 15 or 20 burns scattered all over his body. He-had been stopped by police in a small Mississippi town for.. questioning, and while they questioned him they jabbed lighted cigae- : rettes.into- his flesh, The.burns weren't treated, and they were. ulcerous and infected when, the medical volunteers found the. boy. "
Dr. Spain continues, "After conversation with physicians who have been in Mississippi, I believe that incidents of this nature -with. varying degrees of brutality -- go on regularly and relentless~' ly every day of the week. They are too frequent to. be considered -:. 'newsworthy.'" . . os
With facts like the above. staring one in the face, it: is not surprising. to-find letters like the following appearing. in: the public letter box of the Detroit Free Press (December 11):
"the happenings in the Congo are, to me and any other fellow human, to say the least, inhuman, barbaric and unmerciful., These happenings are brought on from fear and tiredness, ,
"Fear that the white man will continue to take,. giving nothing but slavery and degradation and tired of him doing just that..
"yet these people have been called savages. What is a savage? What makes a savage?
"the atrocious things that have been done and still are: being done: to the black man in America: by the white many ‘can they be any . more. inhuman, barbaric or unmerciful?
“one might: say it's. ‘not the same thing, but isn't it?
‘tthe white man did. not have to go to the Congo. and be: sub jected to such monstrous things, but the black man brought to-America by trickery and force has no choice,"
AMERICAN