Michael Schwerner - Civil Rights Activism

Civil Rights Activism

He later led a local Congress of Racial Equality group on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, called "Downtown CORE," and participated in a 1963 effort to desegregate Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Maryland. The situation in the South led Schwerner and his wife Rita to volunteer to work for National CORE in Mississippi, under the tutelage of Dave Dennis, Mississippi Director of CORE. Bob Moses assigned the Schwerners to organize the community center and activities in Meridian, making Schwerner the first white to be posted permanently outside Jackson.

Civil rights activists were under suspicion in Mississippi, especially those from the North. Spies paid by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission kept track of all northerners and activists. The records opened by court order in 1998 also revealed the state's deep complicity in the murders of three civil rights workers at Philadelphia, Mississippi, because its investigator A.L. Hopkins passed on information about the workers, including the car license number of a new civil rights worker, to the commission. Records showed the commission passed the information on to the Sheriff of Neshoba County, who was implicated in the murders.

Schwerner had been targeted by the Ku Klux Klan after he and his wife, Rita, had taken over a field office in Meridian, Mississippi. There they established a community center for blacks. Schwerner tried to establish contact with white working class citizens of Meridian, and went door-to-door to speak with them. He also organized a black boycott of a popular variety store until it hired its first African American.