Ben Chaney Jr. spent the final years of his life trying to recover from a stroke. His speech had slurred so much that it was difficult for others to understand him, but the last time we spoke, in February 2023, Chaney talked about moving from southern New Jersey, where he was living with family, back to New York City. He wanted to be back in touch with more activists; he said he was preparing to work on another case involving civil rights.
But he died on February 3, 2024.
Born on July 12, 1952, Chaney was the youngest of five children born to Ben and Fannie Lee Chaney in Meridian, Miss. He had three sisters––Barbara, Janice, and Julia––and an older brother, James Earl.
James Earl was that big brother—the kind a little brother could adore. Ben spoke about how after volunteering to work with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), James Earl had been a celebrated backwoods driver in Neshoba County. He knew how to speed through those backwoods roads and elude any menacing pickup trucks that might be following him.
In 1964, James Earl was forced to pull his car over when police sirens trailed him as he drove with two white New Yorkers: Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. Their efforts to register Black voters in Mississippi had enraged members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were stopped by Neshoba County Sheriff’s Deputy Cecil Price. After being stopped, they were handed over to 20 enraged members of the KKK. The three young men were murdered, their bodies buried in an earthen dam.
After a 44-day FBI-led search that made national news, their bodies were finally found. Although the federal government prosecuted some Klan members in 1967, it wasn’t until 2005––some four decades later––that Edgar Ray “Preacher” Killen was imprisoned for having orchestrated the killings of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. Killen served time from 2008 until he died in 2018, but the pain of the race-based murder of James Earl weighed on Ben Chaney for the rest of his life.
A full-fledged social justice activist
Ben Chaney became a full-fledged activist not long after his brother’s murder. Before, he had tagged along when James Earl visited local churches and organized voter education classes; now he decided to devote his own life to working for social justice. He was arrested for taking part in civil rights protests 21 times before he turned age 12.
The Chaney family ultimately moved to New York state: They had faced death threats and suffered fire bombings and cross-burnings in Mississippi from disgruntled white racists who were upset with the family’s activism and the notoriety brought by the killing of James Earl.
After he moved to the New York City area, Ben became active in the Black High School Coalition in 1969. He was part of the protests conducted by a group known as the Community Coalition, who were against the construction of the State Office Building at 125th Street and Lenox Avenue.
Chaney became a member of the Black Panther Party and later the Black Liberation Army. While working with militant Black activists to secure guns in Florida, two Florida Atlantic University students were killed. Chaney was convicted of first-degree murder for those deaths and given a life sentence for the murder of another man in Fort Lauderdale. He was not accused of shooting the victims but found guilty as an accessory to the crime. Even with civil rights activist William Kunstler serving as his attorney, he wound up serving 13 years in prison. He was paroled in 1983 with the assistance of progressive activist attorney Ramsey Clark, who had served as the U.S. Attorney General under President Lyndon B. Johnson.
In 1985, Chaney took on work as a paralegal under Clark. In 1998, he created the nonprofit James Earl Chaney Foundation to further his work on social justice issues in his brother’s honor. Through the foundation, Ben gave talks at colleges and in schools. He also organized regular Reverse Freedom Rides from New York City to Mississippi to help educate younger generations about the locations and people associated with the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.
Local Harlem activist Sam White first met Ben Chaney in the 1980s. He said he fondly remembers visiting Ben at his foundation’s offices and helping him organize the Reverse Freedom Ride tours. “Oh, God, I’ve been many times going back and forth to his office and being down there, hanging out with Ben. Everybody was always doing something there.
“You know, there’s a book I read and one of the main points that it raised was that people in the Movement were fighting for democracy, just like soldiers. And they ought to get some reward, some recognition for their struggle. They stood up for democracy just like the soldiers who fought overseas did; they were just doing it right here––in the South. Many made a lot of sacrifices, and that kind of thing is our history; it ought to be put out there.”
Throughout his life, Ben Chaney continued working to ensure that civil rights cases were being furthered. Having spent his own time in prison, Chaney waged an ongoing campaign for the safety of people locked up in jails and prisons in Mississippi.
Ben’s mother, Fannie Lee Chaney, died on May 22, 2007. He is survived by his sister Julia Chaney-Moss.