MERICANS had a bitter experience during the paratrooper assault on Stanleyville. President Johnson called it “solely and simply a rescue mission.” | UN: Secretary General U Thant rubber-stamped it with the assurance that it was “a purely humanitarian measure.” And at the same time, the news broke about last June’s murder plot against three young civilrights workers in the state of Mississippi. : : For example, the November 28th Detroit Free Press carried an article reciting such things as the “throat slitting of the nuns and an undisclosed number of Dutch priests . . ..a bloodbath against all whites. . . The bodies (of 45 Europeans) were found mutilated beyond recognition, and in several cases cannibalism was suspected.” On the very same front page, where these allegations—which sound so much like atrocity propaganda—appeared, another article carried the title: “Mississippi Horror Story: A Doctor’s Report.” This was written by Dr. David Spain, clinical professor of pathology at New York Downstate Medical Centre. He was called down to Mississippi by Dr. Charles Goodrich, a member of the Medical Committee for Human Rights which was organised to aid civil-rights workers in the South. The bodies of three young civil-rights workers, missing since June 21st, had finally been found in August and the families of two of the victims wanted an expert pathologist at the autopsy as an independent observer. Local authorities refused to allow independent observers and tried to block any examinations after the official one. With the help of the Lawyers’ Constitutional Defense Committee (organised to give legal aid to southern Negroes) and the courageous insistence of Mrs. Chaney, the mother of the Negro victim, Dr. Spain was at last able to examine the body of 21-year-old James Chaney. (Asa result of her determination to reveal the truth about the triple murder, Mrs. Chaney’s home was bombed and shot into shortly after she signed the papers requesting Dr, Spain’s examination of her son’s body). Dr. Spain had already read the reports about the official examination. “But the report jyst didn’t make good medical sense to me. The statements that the bodies. were badly decomposed and that there was no evidence of mutilation or other injury were contradictory — if the bodies were badly decomposed, it would be extremely unlikely that an official determination could be made as to the extent of bodily injuries.” His examination confirmed his suspicion that the official report was false. He examined the frail boy’s wrist, ““The wrist was broken,” the doctor wrote, “ ... bones were smashed so badly that his wrist must have been literally flapping when he was carried... Then I noticed Chaney’s jaw. It was broken —. the lower jaw was completely shattered, split vertically, from some tremendous force . . . I carefully examined the body, and found that the bones in the right shoulder were crushed— again, from some strong and direct blow... this frail boy had been beaten in an inhuman fashion, The blows that had so terribly shattered his bones — I surmised he must have been beaten with chains, or a pipe—
were in themselves sufficient to cause death . . . It was obvious to any first-year medical student that this boy had been beaten to a pulp.” The story of the triple murder was reconstructed by noted Negro author Louis Lomax who gathered his material from light-skinned Negroes who had infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan. Lomax wrote: “Chaney is tied to a tree and beaten with chains. His bones snap and his screams are soon ended. There is no noise now except for the thud of chains crushing flesh —and the crack of ribs and bones.” The other two civil-rights workers, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, break from their captors who had forced them to watch the murder of their colleague. The two white students are clubbed and all three are later shot and buried. Five months after these murders the FBI, after great pressure from Negroes, finally charged 21 men with deliberately plotting and carrying out the triple murder. Almost all are members of the Ku Klux Klan. Three are officers of the law: Sheriff Rainey, Deputy Sheriff Price and Patrolman Otha Neal Burkes. On December toth
a U.S. Commissioner dismissed
charges against 19 of these men on
the grounds that the FBI evidence (a
signed confession by one of the
plotters) was. “hearsay” and not suf-
ficient evidence to hold the accused
men. Charges against the other two
were later dropped as well. All 21
still face a grand jury hearing to de-
termine whether they should be
brought to trial.
The fact that three police officers
were included in this group of
murderers is no surprise to anyone
familiar with “law and order” in the
south. While in Mississippi awaiting
permission to examine Chaney’s body,
Dr. Spain reports that he “browsed
through a file of reports from field
teams of the Medical Committee for
Human Rights. The first report de~
scribed extended treatment given a
young Negro civil-rights worker for
I§ or 20 burns scattered all over his
body. He had been stopped by police
in a small Mississippi town for ques-
tioning, and while they questioned
him they jabbed lighted cigarettes into
his flesh. The burns weren’t treated,
and they were ulcerous and infected
when the medical volunteers found the
boy.”
Dr. Spain continues: “After con-
versation with physicians who have
been in Mississippi, I believe that inci-
dents of this nature — with varying
degrees of brutality—go on regularly
and relentlessly every day of the week.
They are too frequent to be con-
sidered ‘newsworthy’ ”.
With facts like the above staring
one in the face, it is not surprising to
find letters like the following appear-
ing in the public letter box of the
Detroit Free Press (December 11th):
“The happenings in the Congo are,
to me and any other fellow human,
to say the least, inhuman, barbaric
and unmerciful. These happenings
are brought on from fear and tired-
ness.
“Fear that the white man will con-
tinue to take, giving nothing but
slavery and degradation and tired of
him doing just that.
“Yet these people have been called
savages. What is a savage? What
makes a savage?
“The atrocious things that have
been done and still are being done to
the black man in America by the
white man, can they be any more in-
human, barbaric or unmerciful?
“One might say it’s not the same
thing, but isn’t it?
“The white man did not have to
go to the Congo and be subjected to
such monstrous things, but the black
man brought to America by trickery
and force has no choice.”