Florence Mars, Civil Rights Author, Dies at 84
JACKSON Miss.
Florence Mars, whose book about the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers won praise from many but made her the target of the Ku Klux Klan, has died, a relative said Monday. She was 84.
Mars suffered from Bell’s palsy and other ailments and died Sunday, said her godson, Mark Howell.
Mars was one of the few residents of rural Philadelphia, Miss., to cooperate with FBI agents who investigated the disappearance of three civil rights workers during the Freedom Summer in 1964.
Her book, Witness in Philadelphia, was published in 1977 and chronicled the turbulent struggle to register Black voters and the brutal slayings of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.
The men were detained on a traffic violation in 1964 after investigating the burning of a Black church. The Klan ambushed them when they were released from the Neshoba County Jail a few hours later. They were beaten and shot and their bodies buried in an earthen dam.
