Rita Schwerner, Meridian Mississippi

Rita Schwerner (now Schwerner-Bender) was a founding member of the downtown New York City chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). She was the wife of the late Michael Schwerner, who along with James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were killed in Mississippi by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964. The Schwerners worked for the Mississippi branch of CORE in 1963, and were staff at the Freedom Summer Project training in Oxford in the summer of 1964. Rita was in Oxford helping with the second training session when she learned of the disappearance of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman. Immediately, she demanded an FBI investigation. She maintains that the only reason their disappearance gained national attention was because Goodman and Schwerner were white.