Miami U. to Erect Memorial for Slain Civil Rights Activists

Black Issues in Higher Education, Nov 25, 1999

OXFORD, Ohio -- A memorial is being erected to three civil rights activists who trained at Miami University before going to the South to register Black voters in 1964.

Community leaders and university officials broke ground earlier this month for an amphitheater-style, outdoor classroom in honor of Andrew Goodman, 24, James Chaney, 21, and Michael Schwerner, 21, whose murders inspired the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning."

Plans for the memorial were announced in February. University officials say it will cost between $50,000 and $100,000 and should be finished in 2000.

The three students disappeared June 21, 1964, while on a trip to see a firebombed Black church. Their bodies were found in an earthen dam on Aug. 4 of that year.

Ku Klux Klan members went to prison on federal conspiracy charges in the case.

They were among about 800 civil rights volunteers who trained as part of the Mississippi Summer Project at the Western College for Women, now a part of Miami University.