“Neshoba”, the powerful documentary opening at the Cinema Village on Friday in NY and at the Laemmle Music Hall in LA on September 10th, gets its title from the Mississippi County where civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were slain in 1964. Chaney was an African-American from Mississippi while the other two men were New York Jews. There was evidence that Chaney was tortured and then buried alive in the earthen dam where all three were eventually discovered.
Forty years later Micki Dickoff was approached by Ben Chaney, James’s younger brother, about making a movie about what happened in 1964 and about the new trial that was taking place in Philadelphia, the seat of Neshoba County. Unlike its Greek etymological origins, this sleepy town was anything but a place of brotherly love. Dickoff saw the need to move ahead rapidly on the project since Andrew Goodman’s mother, then 88 and in failing health, was still alive as was Fannie Lee Chaney, James’s mother. The Philadelphia Coalition, a group of white and black local citizens, was pressing for justice in the case (the original trial in 1967 had resulted in very light sentences) and national attention was riveted on the efforts to retry one of the few surviving killers, a long-time Klan member named Edgar Ray “Preacher” Killen who owned a saw-mill and a part-time pastor in a Baptist Church. He was 80 years old when he finally stood trial. full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/neshoba/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
