Dead Celebrity Alert

Fannie Lee Chaney, a $28-a-week bakery worker who became a target of racial hatred herself after her son James Chaney and two other civil rights workers were killed by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964, died last week in Willingboro, N.J. She was 84.

Her son Ben, James’ younger brother, confirmed the May 22 death in a telephone interview. …

Four decades after losing her son, Chaney drew national attention in June 2005 when she testified for the state of Mississippi in the murder case against one of the killers.

James Chaney, a black man from Meridian, and two white civil rights workers from the North, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, disappeared in Neshoba County on June 21, 1964, at the onset of a summer-long drive by an umbrella group of civil rights organizations to register black Mississippians to vote. … Read full obituary

Filed under Civil Rights