June 20, 2008Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) released the following statement commemorating the 44th anniversary of the murders of three young civil rights workers – James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner – in Nashoba County, Mississippi.
“On June 21, 1964, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were brutally beaten and murdered by a gang of KKK members because of their work to register black voters in rural Mississippi. It took decades, but in 2005, the ringleader in these brutal killings was finally brought to justice and will live the rest of his life behind bars. But while Edgar Ray Killen was eventually convicted for the murder of these three young men, many of these heinous Civil Rights era crimes remain unsolved, and their perpetrators remain unpunished.