Editing Meridian, Mississippi (section)

=== Civil Rights movement ===
During the [[American Civil Rights Movement]] in the 1960s, Meridian was home to a [[Council of Federated Organizations]] (COFO) office and several other activist organizations.<ref name="DowntownHD" /> [[James Chaney]] and other local residents, along with [[Michael Schwerner]], his wife Rita, and [[Andrew Goodman (activist)|Andrew Goodman]], volunteers from New York City, worked to create a community center. They held classes during [[Freedom Summer]] to help prepare African Americans in the area to prepare to regain their constitutional franchise, after having been excluded from politics since [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disenfranchisement]] in 1890.<ref name="schwerner">{{cite web|url=http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/price&bowers/Schwerner.htm |title=Biography of Michael Schwerner |publisher=[[University of Missouri-Kansas City]] |access-date=June 8, 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080515025355/http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/price%26bowers/Schwerner.htm |archive-date=May 15, 2008}}</ref> Whites in the area resented the activism, and physically attacked civil rights workers.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.crmvet.org/docs/msrv64.pdf|title=Mississippi: Subversion of the Right to Vote|publisher=Civil Rights Movement Archive|page=5|access-date=January 5, 2010}}</ref> In June 1964, Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman went to [[Neshoba County, Mississippi]], to meet with members of a black church that had been bombed and burned. The three disappeared that night on their way back to Meridian.<ref name="schwerner" /> Following a massive [[FBI]] investigation, their murdered bodies were found two months later, buried in an earthen dam.

Seven [[Klansmen]], including a deputy sheriff, were convicted by an all-white jury in the federal courthouse in Meridian of "depriving the victims of their civil rights".<ref name="Robertson"/> Three defendants were acquitted in the trial for the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.<ref>{{cite web|last=Klopfer |first=Susan |url=http://themiddleoftheinternet.com/Chaney_Goodman_Schwerner.htm |title=Civil Rights Murders |access-date=June 8, 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080501073239/http://themiddleoftheinternet.com/Chaney_Goodman_Schwerner.htm |archive-date=May 1, 2008}}</ref> This was the first time that a white jury had convicted "a white official in a civil rights killing."<ref name="Robertson">Campbell Robertson, "Last Chapter for a Courthouse Where Mississippi Faced Its Past", ''New York Times'', September 18, 2012, p. 1, 16</ref>

In 2005, the state brought charges in the case for the first time. [[Edgar Ray Killen]] was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in prison.<ref>{{cite news |first=Ariel |last=Hart |title=41 Years Later, Ex-Klansman Gets 60 Years in Civil Rights Deaths |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/national/24killen.html |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=June 24, 2005 |access-date=August 22, 2009 }}</ref> Meridian later honored Chaney by renaming a portion of 49th Avenue after him and holding an annual memorial service.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.crmvet.org/anc/2007arch/0706csg.htm |title=43rd Annual Mississippi Civil Rights Martyrs Memorial Service and Conference and Caravan for Justice |publisher=Civil Rights Movement Archive |access-date=August 21, 2009 |date=May 10, 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100505052304/http://www.crmvet.org/anc/2007arch/0706csg.htm |archive-date=May 5, 2010 }}</ref>