Those were all big events, but the biggest thing I remember of that year was the murder of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, the three civil rights workers.

That summer my parents were sitting on the porch and I was sitting on one of the banisters of our front steps, when we all noticed a bunch of people in the distance walking through our cotton field. They were a long way off, but we could tell they weren’t ordinary trespassers. Most were wearing white shirts.

My father got in his 56 Dodge pickup and said he’d be back shortly. He wanted to find out what was going on. We watched from the porch as someone stopped him and we could tell there was a serious conversation taking place. Finally, Daddy turned the truck around and came back home.

That’s how we learned that the three civil rights workers were missing. Their car had been ditched in a swamp several miles south of our farm and they were nowhere to be found.

Those men going through our cotton field were federal agents and sailors from the naval air station at Meridian, Mississippi. They were looking for them.

The three young men had come to our part of the country to aid in voter registration since the poll tax had been lifted not long before. That was a dangerous thing to do in those days. The agents knew there was a heavy Klan presence in the area and suspected they had been murdered.

It took them a while, but with the help of an informant they learned the bodies had been buried in the dam of a lake that was being built in an adjoining county.

Not only the Klan, but law enforcement in the county south of ours had been involved. Several were tried and convicted, but many more evaded prison.

Forty years after the murders, Edgar Killen was convicted as one of the men who had been heavily involved in their murders and was sentenced to life in prison.

There was an odd thing about him that I didn’t know until my cousin told me many years later. Killen had come to Louisville’s riding club back in the 60’s and specifically sought out my father.

At the time my father had a black stallion named JB and JB was well known in the surrounding area as a champion gated saddle horse. Being well known, he ended up siring a lot of colts.

Also, being well known there was always someone that wanted to pit their horse against him. That night it was Edgar Killen. My cousin’s father knew of him and told her something was up and to stay away from that man. He pointed to Killen.

He tracked down my father and let him know that he thought he had the better horse. He wanted to prove it. The riding arena cleared and the two of them lined up. Someone gave the signal to start and the race was on. JB hit his saddle gate, locked in, and walked off, leaving Killen’s horse in the dust.

She said Edgar never said a word, just scowled, loaded up his horse and left.

There were other terrible things going on back then that I was either too young know about or too naïve to realize. In 1963 Byron De La Beckwith murdered Medgar Evers ninety miles from where I lived. And James Seale killed two young boys, Charles Moore and Henry Dee, who were hitch-hiking and dumped their bodies in a river. The kids were guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

When I think back to those times and reflect on all those things that were going on around me I realize I lived through a tumultuous period in history. Those old songs, Strange Fruit and A Change is Gonna Come, hit home to me like never before.

A few decades after this took place an old friend and I were talking about the agents and sailors that scoured our fields searching for the missing civil rights workers went he told me about Mr. Smith, a salesman that peddled Standard Tea products door to door in our neck of the woods.

He drove an old van that was normally covered in dust from travelling all the little country backroads. Apparently, one of the sailors had written in the dust on the back of his van, “Join the Navy, See Mississippi.”

(to be continued)

Harold Algood and J. B., his black stallion.	Cathy Bennett and me playing tug-of-war over a toy pistol on a chilly winter day. Behind us is the old one room store, Terry's Corner, that stood on the edge of our front yard. As you can see this was a favorite picture of mine and I carried it in my wallet so long I nearly destroyed it. Cathy, although a cousin, is like a sister to me.
Standing is Sarah Clark Eatman Bennett, my great great grandmother with her daughter and her family; Joseph Simpson Brasfield and Margaret Josephine Bennett Brasfield. Their children are; Joseph Clarence 1885 - died in infancy. Robert Oscar 1887 - 1917. Sallie Mae 1888 - 1973. Leland Bennett 1890 -1974. Harvie Olan 1894 - 1941, Ernest 1897 - 1898. Sallied Mae Brasfield worked at the post office for 40 years and took care of her younger brother Leland. They lived across the street in the old Brasfield home until it was condemned. Then their cousin helped build a small house for them at the lower end of the same block, where they lived until they passed away.	I believe this is Pearl and Thelma Bennett. My grandmother helped raise them after her brother and his wife died in the early part of the twentieth century.
Unknown men hauling pulpwood in Winston County.	Photo by Walter Bennett. I suspect this man had gone to the rear of a store in town to purchase groceries in the early 40s.

_______________
Rick Algood
September 6, 2021