October 5, 2007

Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Oshinsky to speak about “Delayed Justice” in the “Mississippi Burning” Civil Rights murders

WHERE:  Temple University Ambler, 580 Meetinghouse Road, Learning Center Auditorium

WHEN:    Thursday, October 25, 7:30 p.m.

On June 20, 1964, Andrew Goodman arrived in Mississippi, meeting up with James Chaney and Michael Schwerner to help train volunteers for a statewide voter registration drive, part of what became known as “Freedom Summer.” Just a day later, their lives were ended by members of the Ku Klux Klan in rural Nebosha County — their bodies would not be found until six weeks later following one of the largest F.B.I. manhunts in U.S. history.

While seven men were convicted on Federal charges of violating the civil rights of the three men, no one ever faced state murder charges. Final justice in the 1964 “Mississippi Burning” Civil Rights murders wouldn’t come until decades later due, in part, to a New York Times investigation of the case by Pulitzer Prize winning-author Dr. David Oshinsky.

On Thursday, October 25, Dr. Oshinsky will speak about “Delayed Justice: Tracking the Infamous Civil Rights Murders in the ‘Mississippi Burning’ Case,” at 7:30 p.m., in the Learning Center Auditorium. This special program, which is free and open to the public, was made possible by the Leonard Mellman Visiting Scholar Program.

“In the late 1990s, the state of Mississippi opened up the State Sovereignty Commission Files. On its surface, the Sovereignty Commission had been set up in the 1950s to fight integration,” said Oshinsky, who won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book Polio: An American Story. “Privately, however, the Sovereignty Commission was akin to Cold War East Germany, a semi-secret organization investigating and spying on civil rights efforts. In the 1990s, an archivist found this unbelievable treasure trove of files and the discussion began on whether to open the files as important historical documents.”

When the files were opened — individuals named in the files had a year to look through them prior to their release — Oshinsky was sent to Mississippi by the New York Times “to look through the files to see if there was anything new, particularly about the Mississippi Burning case.”

“The files contained a lot of gossip, a lot of innuendo, but they also contained names of informants and, surprisingly, new leads on the murders of Medgar Evers and Vernon Dahmer, prominent civil rights leaders, and the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner,” he said. “There appeared to be a lot of information leading in the direction of Edgar Ray Killen, a right wing fundamentalist preacher who, according to the FBI, was the head of the Ku Klux Klan where the killings took place. The FBI had come to the same conclusion, that he was the mastermind behind the murders, but he was never charged by the state.”

Oshinsky was the first person to interview Killen about the murders more than 30 years after the fact “at his farm in the middle of nowhere.”

“He spent the night sharing his views on the world. It was one of the weirdest, most unsettling experiences I have ever had,” he said. “In the article, I wrote that the case should be re-opened and that Killen should be charged with murder.”

According to Oshinsky, he helped “get the ball rolling,” but the Jackson Clarion-Ledger “did the real hard work, the investigative reporting to convince the state to reinvestigate and bring Killen to trial.”

In 2005, 41 years after Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner had been killed, Killen was convicted by a Nebosha County for complicity in their murders.

“These were among the most high profile murders of the Civil Rights Movement. It helped turn the Civil Rights Movement into a national crusade,” Oshinsky said. “This was one of the hardest times to come to grips with — how does a community get past these previous injustices. For this community, it was an open wound and I think, finally, there was a sense of closure.”

Dr. Oshinsky, a leading historian of modern American politics and culture, holds the Blanton Chair in History at the University of Texas. In addition to the 2006 Pulitzer Prize he also received the 2006 Hoover Presidential Book Award for writing Polio: An American Story. He is also author of A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy, which won the Hardeman Prize as the best book about the U.S. Congress, and Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice, which won the Robert Kennedy Prize for its contribution to human rights. He is a co-author of American Passages: A History of the United States, and a co-editor of The Oxford Companion to United States History. His articles and reviews appear regularly in the New York Times.

Prior to his lecture at Ambler, on Wednesday, October 24, Dr. Oshinsky will speak at the Temple University Main Campus on the topic “Polio: A Look Back at America’s Most Successful Public Health Crusade.” The event will be held at 4 p.m., in the Kiva Auditorium. 

“I was born in 1944 and I tend to write about what I remember. Among my earliest memories is that my parents bought our first television to watch the McCarthy hearings,” he said. “Polio is something I remember very well. I vividly recall the fear, the closed swimming pools, resting after lunch, the sense of panic if anyone had a stiff neck in the summer.”

In New York, Oshinsky said, newspapers ran “box scores” listing the number of people suffering from paralytic polio.

“We’d come back to school and there would be empty desks or a kid would have his legs in braces. I recall images of iron lungs lined wall to wall in area hospitals,” he said. “McCarthyism was a bad American crusade while polio was a good one, a true American success story — how America united to fight this disease. It created a revolution in philanthropy and dramatically changed our approach to fighting disease.”

Winning the Pulitzer Prize, Oshinsky said, was “clearly a life changing experience.”

“I thought it was an important book, but when it happened I was blown away; I could not believe it. I’m very fortunate,” he said. “I see myself as a storyteller. Whether it’s crime and punishment in the south, polio, or a biography of McCarthy, I want to tell the story through the most interesting characters and the most important events.”

Oshinsky said he wants to “tell the story as simply as I can and get out of the way.”

“You don’t have to editorialize McCarthyism or Civil Rights injustices,” he said. “Just tell the story. Tell it through the characters that speak to the larger issues.”

Oshinsky is no stranger to the Philadelphia area, he said.

“My wife and I are in Texas, but we have a home in Bucks County right outside of New Hope,” he said. “Temple is my home turf; it’s a homecoming for me. I’m really looking forward to it.

Dr. Oshinsky’s lecture at the Ambler campus is part of Temple University Ambler’s inaugural Cultural Affairs Series.

“The Temple University Ambler Cultural Affairs Series is intended to enrich the range and depth of the cultural experiences of Temple students and, at the same time, open our doors to our neighbors in the surrounding communities,” said Temple University Ambler Dean Dr. James W. Hilty. “Our goal is to connect Temple Ambler more directly to the community by sharing our cultural and educational resources. In this way we hope to contribute to the intellectual and cultural dialogue, to foster a larger sense of mutual interest, and to enliven and enrich our daily lives.”