Brother recalls horrible summer of '64
Family waited 44 days for news of James Chaney's fate
 |  Ben Chaney said his family was forced to move from Mississippi and that the grave of his brother was desecrated for 25 years. |
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 An elderly Mississippi man pleads not guilty to murder charges in the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers.
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(CNN) -- Ben Chaney was 10 when his older brother, James, disappeared in Mississippi along with two other civil rights activists, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. More than 40 years have passed, but Ben still remembers the agonizing wait that summer.
It would be 44 days before the family learned the fate of James and the other two; all three were killed and their bodies callously buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi.
"I remember my mother and the agony she went through. The pain that was on her face," Chaney told CNN on Friday from New York, where he now lives. "She used to walk around the house, day and night. She used to clean up the house top to bottom, over and over again, just to keep busy during the disappearance. Then, finally, once the bodies were found and the burial took place, she just broke down."
At a courthouse in Philadelphia on Friday, Edgar Ray Killen, 79, a reputed member of the Ku Klux Klan and an outspoken white supremacist nicknamed "Preacher," pleaded not guilty in the killings. (Full story)
His arraignment came a day after a grand jury indicted him on three counts of murder in the slayings of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman on June 21, 1964. It was the first time the state has leveled charges against anyone in the case.
In 1967, Killen was among 19 people who faced federal charges in the killings. The case ended in a mistrial for Killen, though seven people -- including a Philadelphia police officer and a Neshoba County sheriff's deputy -- were convicted of conspiracy.
Ben Chaney told CNN he believes the Mississippi attorney general went after the weakest person in the investigation, and other, more powerful whites are going unpunished.
"It would be a miscarriage of justice unless all of these individuals go to trial," he said.
Still, he said he is pleased Killen faces trial.
"If it was up to me, he would sit in a jail cell and watch life pass him by," said Chaney, who opposes capital punishment. "For the rest of his life, just watch it go by."
Lawrence Guyot, a civil rights activist who said he almost got in the car with Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman that fateful 1964 night, said the arraignment Friday had been a long time coming, and he praised local Mississippians for bringing more attention to the case in recent years. He called the case the "most politicized, open and most horrific political assassination in the Sixties."
"Justice delayed should not be justice denied," he said.
Morris Dees, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said it is important for the trial to take place and for the investigation to continue.
"This was a crime committed by Klansmen, with the aid and assistance of law enforcement officers," he said. "And they were protected by white prosecutors who refused to bring murder charges against them."
A man who identified himself as the defendant's brother told The Associated Press that the indictment was "pitiful."
"He won't talk about it," Jerry G. Killen told the AP. "I don't know if he did it or not."
Since the crime, Ben Chaney has thought constantly about his slain brother, a black resident of Meridian, Mississippi, who was participating in the "Freedom Summer" drive to register black voters in the state. Schwerner, 24, and Goodman, 20, both white volunteers from the Northeast, were working with Chaney.
The three were arrested in Neshoba County en route to Meridian, jailed briefly and released. Late that night, they were stopped outside town, beaten, and shot to death.
 "I believe he believed he was going to be successful, that he would make a difference, that he would make a change and that he would live through it." 
-- Ben Chaney, brother of victim James Chaney
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Carolyn Goodman, mother of Andrew Goodman, told the AP that she "knew that in the end the right thing was going to happen."
"I'm not looking for revenge. I'm looking for justice," she told the AP.
Ben Chaney said his family was forced to move from Mississippi in 1965 after Klan members shot at their house and burned crosses in the yard.
"They had accused my mother of scandalizing Mississippi whites because she let her son get involved in the civil rights movement."
He recalled his brother as an ordinary young man who "made a commitment to do something to better himself, to better his community, his state, his city and the country."
"It takes ordinary people to make changes, and as a young man, he made that commitment, that sacrifice," Chaney said.
He said he hopes younger blacks who have not had to fight for civil rights like previous generations "confirm their faith in what they believe."
"I hope they realize he did," he said.
He said the gravestone of James Earl Chaney was desecrated in Mississippi for about 25 years. A sheriff once told him it was because the grave site "represented a symbol for young people in the area to stand up."
The gravestone reads: "There are those who are alive yet will never live, there are those who are dead yet will live forever; great deeds inspire and encourage the living."
Ben Chaney said his brother's life was not in vain.
"I believe he made a significant mark on society," he said. "If he had a choice, even today he would do the same thing over and over again, because I don't believe he realized that he could die. I believe he believed he was going to be successful, that he would make a difference, that he would make a change and that he would live through it."
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
