An Almanac of Infamy

On this day in 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered by the KKK for registering black voters in Mississippi. Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney were returning from a trip to Philadelphia, MS when they were pulled over by deputy sheriff Cecil Price, who held them in custody while his fellow hate group members prepared to shoot them and bury them in graves that had been dug in advance. When news of their disappearance got out, FBI Agents converged on the state and eventually learned of their murders through an informant. Since the state of Mississippi refused to prosecute, the federal government charged 18 men with conspiracy to violate the civil rights of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney. Seven men were convicted, eight men were acquitted and the all-white jury deadlocked on the remaining three. On June 21, 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, an outspoken white supremacist and Baptist minister, was convicted on three charges of manslaughter and sentenced to sixty years in p...

On this day in 1984, liberal radio talk show host Alan Berg was gunned down in the driveway of his Denver, CO home. Nearly a year later, neo-Nazi leader Bruce Pierce was arrested in Georgia. His group, The Order, had been linked to several armored car robberies in the western half of the United States. Two of his accomplices, David Lane and Richard Scutari, were arrested shortly after Pierce's capture, while a third accomplice, Robert Matthews, had died in a shootout with FBI agents in December 1984. Pierce, Lane, and Scutari were charged with violating Berg's civil rights and a jury found Pierce responsible for Berg's death and Lane for driving the getaway car. Scutari was acquitted. It's believed that Alan Berg was targeted by the Order, not only because he was Jewish but because he also openly challenged White Supremacist beliefs on his radio show. His murder inspired the movies Betrayed and Talk Radio . Related Reading: Alan Berg: Talked to Death Murdered ...