Alton Wayne Roberts

Alton Wayne Roberts (6 April 1938 - 11 September 1999) was an American white supremacist and Ku Klux Klan member convicted of participating in the Freedom Summer murders. Roberts and another Klansman, James Jordan, had executed civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

Biography

Murders

On 21 June 1964, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, members of the Congress of Racial Equality, arrived in Neshoba County to protest for voting rights. Upon arrival, they were arrested for speeding by local Sheriff's Deputy Cecil Price. While the three were in prison, Price, under the orders of Klan Imperial Wizard Samuel Bowers, sent Edgar Ray Killen to recruit local Klansmen into a lynch mob to deal with the activists. Alton W. Roberts was one of those recruited by Killen.

The activists were released after several hours and drove towards the town of Meridian, tailed by three cars driven by Price, Billy Posey and Horace Barnette. Roberts was in Posey's car with Jerry Sharpe and Jimmy Townsend. The car suffered from motor problems and Roberts was forced to transfer to Barnette's car, leaving Sharpe and Townsend by the side of the road. Eventually Price caught up, stopped the activists car, forced them into his car and took them to the remote County Road 515, where they were ordered to get out. Roberts grabbed Schwerner and asked "Are you that nigger lover?", shooting him in the heart when he replied "Sir, I know how you feel". He then shot Goodman in the chest. Chaney attempted to run but Roberts and James Jordan fired after him, hitting him in the back and abdomen. The mob beat and castrated Chaney before he was shot in the head by Roberts. The three activists were then loaded into their station wagon and driven to a nearby earthen dam, where they were buried.

Investigation

Following the disappearence of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent 150 FBI agents to Mississippi to investigate. The bodies were found on 4 August after the FBI received an anonymous tip-off. No further leads were forthcoming, and the FBI were allegedly forced to resort to hiring mobster Greg Scarpa to beat Klan suspects until one, Lawrence Byrd, gave them information about the murders. Most of the suspects, including Roberts, were interviewed and photographed, until Jordan eventually confessed his role in the murders and agreed to testify against his co-conspirators in return for immunity.

21 Klansmen, including Roberts, were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to deprive the three victims of their civil rights through murder. The indictments were dismissed, but a federal grand jury re-indicted Roberts and 17 others. Federal judge William Cox attempted to dismiss the indictments based on jurisdiction concerns but was overruled by the Supreme Court. During the trial, Roberts was photographed beating up CBS cameraman Laurens Pierce outside the courthouse.

Ultimately Roberts and six others were convicted. Judge Cox, who was notoriously pro-segregation, sentenced Roberts to only ten years in federal prison. He served six years in the McNeil Island Correction Centre before being paroled, and later died in 1999.