It's All Connected
Tragedy in Mississippi grips the nation, again.
Sixty-two years after the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner shocked the nation, Mississippi is once again confronting painful questions following the death of 18-year-old Nolan Wells, a former wide receiver at Southwest Mississippi Community College. Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were in Mississippi supporting voter registration in Black southern communities during the “Freedom Summer Campaign” in 1964. Goodman and Schwerner were Jewish; all three were working together to extend the promise of democracy to its Black citizens.
Their abandoned car was found along Highway 21 outside of Philadelphia, MS. A conspiracy of silence stonewalled investigators. Despite 44 days of searching, the bodies of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner could not be found. However, during the investigation, searchers discovered the bodies of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, 14-year-old Herbert Oarsby, and five other deceased African Americans who were never identified in separate disappearances.
Mississippi officials refused to charge any of the 21 men implicated in the FBI's investigation. The Department of Justice charged the men, including Sheriff Lawrence Rainey, Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Samuel Bowers, and minister Edgar Ray Killen, with civil rights violations. Eighteen men were brought to trial; seven were convicted and sentenced between three and ten years, and no one served more than six. In 2000, a juror revealed the panel hung on Killen's conviction because one juror said she “could never convict a preacher.”
Nolan Wells mysteriously disappeared on July 4 — the 250th anniversary of America's founding — while vacationing with friends on Mississippi's Horn Island. His friends returned home without him, leaving his parents to piece together what had happened. His body was discovered two days later. While the circumstances differ, Nolan Wells' death has renewed painful questions about justice, transparency, and public trust in Mississippi. Those questions inevitably evoke memories of a darker chapter in the state's history; time will tell. History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Whether that proves true here remains to be seen. On July 20, 2026, eighteen-year-old Nolan Wells was laid to rest — another young Black man whose life ended before he had the opportunity to realize his full potential. May he rest in peace, and may his memory always be a blessing, like that of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
Every generation inherits rights secured by the sacrifices of those who came before it. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and countless others risked — and in some cases gave — their lives so that every eligible American could exercise the right to vote. Whether one agrees with today's politics or not, their sacrifice is a reminder that participation in our democracy should never be taken for granted.
