July 4th causes us to think about freedom and health.  There is clearly a strong link between the two for emotional, economic, educational, employment, environmental and for access to healthcare reasons.  To my knowledge there have been no experimental studies which examined these links; I am not sure how you would design such a study. There are, however, observational analyses which have studied the negative effects of the lack of freedom upon individual health.

For health reasons, the most important freedoms are religion, speech, assembly, the press and the right to vote.  There are many illustrations of the negative impact of the lack of freedom upon the lives of those whose freedoms have been denied, but few match the history of the lives of Michael “Mickey” Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.  These young men’s names ought to be remembered for the books they wrote, or for the influence they had in the lives of their own children, but, tragically their names, forgotten by most, are remembered by us, because on June 21, 1964, they were murdered just outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi. 

While this is a dramatic and thankfully rare health consequence of the lack of a basic freedom, in this case the freedom to vote, the less dramatic and regrettably more common health consequences of the absence of freedom are very much with us.  Whether it is the lack of access to routine and preventive healthcare, or the lack of affordable pharmaceuticals, these less dramatic consequences nevertheless decrease longevity and well-being during life.  (Next week, we will examine how the Accountable Care Act, which has just been judged as constitutional, impacts this basic freedom.)

It is ironic that residents of a city whose name means “brotherly love” murdered these three young men.  It is ironic that they were murdered in a community, which considered itself Christian.  It is ironic that they were murdered by people who professed belief in the Bible, but who had effectively forgotten the Gospel admonition, which declares, “He that says he loves God and hates his brother is a liar.”  It is ironic that they were murdered almost 100 years after the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which forever did away with slavery and provided the basis for the elimination of legally sanctioned racial prejudice in the 1960s.

Five days before the murder of these three young men, members of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan burned the Mount Zion Methodist Church in the all-black community of Longdale near Philadelphia.  On July 24th, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Visited Longdale and spoke, what I believe to be the greatest indictment of the contemporary Christian church I have ever heard.  He said, “I feel sorry for those who were hurt by this, but I rejoice that there are churches relevant enough that people of ill-will will be willing to burn them.  This church was burned because it took a stand.”  One of the greatest regrets of my life is that I have never been a member of a church that anyone wanted to burn!

These events have been portrayed in several popular movies, one of which is Mississippi Burning.  But for me, the most compelling portrayal of this tragedy is a book, which I read once a year.  We Are Not Afraid:  The Story of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney and the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi, published in 1988 by MacMillan, and written by Seth Cagin and Philip Dray, is a compelling history of a cowardly event.  It is a book, which both shames me as a Southerner and stimulates in me hope that the day will come when all our children are “judged by their character rather than by the color of their skin.”

These events are a warning to all who would attempt to use the prejudice of their communities for their own personal advantage.  Forgotten, these murders become meaningless acts of violence; remembered; they become signposts warning all of us that hatred, prejudice, racism and bigotry - all synonyms for the base instincts of men and women€”lurk in the shadows of every society.  For these shadows to dominate the light only requires, as Edmund Burke aptly said, “for good men and women to do nothing.”  For us to say nothing and to do nothing is to yield the field to the shadows, to the darkness, to the evil which only awaits an opportunity to spring out of its cage which is fashioned by alertness and which is locked by public denunciation of evil.

For those who of us who were alive at the time of these murders, but who were busy with our own lives and did little or nothing to turn the tide of evil led by the Klan and white, Southern, religious bigots, remembering may be the only act of true repentance and contrition with which we can expiate our own souls.  Yet, remembering is not enough!  We must also act.

• We must make certain there is no vacuum of moral authority in our own circle of influence in which the dark shadows would feel welcome to strain against their cage and their locks.
• We must make certain that everyone in our community knows that no one can take another human life with impunity.
• We must make certain that our personal and public embracing of our brothers and sisters in creation, regardless of race, creed, national origin, color or culture, is so positive and so pronounced that the evil shadows will shrink from the competition with the light.
• We must make certain that everyone in our community knows there are no human beings upon whom there is “open season,” no matter how we differ with them in habits, choices or beliefs.
• We must make certain that our acts of charity - our acts of genuine love and kindness, not of arrogant noblesse oblige - toward everyone within our community, declare that there is no segment of that community without worth, value, dignity and protection.
• We must make certain that everyone’s child has the protection of the passion and zeal with which we protect our own child, grandchild,0 or loved one.
• We must make certain that every child has access to the same high level of healthcare which our children and grandchildren enjoy.

June 16, 2015  marked fifty-one years since the evil shadows were welcomed out of their cage in Mississippi.  As we remember these martyrs to the freedom of all men and women, we must push back the dark shadows in our community by extending love, kindness and mercy to all men and women, boys and girls.  And, we must do it spontaneously, joyfully, consistently, constantly.  In that way, we can build in our hearts, families and community, a fitting memorial to these three, who had the light of their life snuffed out by the evil of darkness.  We can let them live again, as the light of our lives, enlarged by our remembrance of Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, pushes back the dark shadows, which engulfed them.  We can let them live again as we make certain that no one’s child is consumed by darkness in our community.

As we exercise our franchise and as we enjoy our freedom; as we enjoy the fruits of both in our physical health, we must realize that we will never be fully free, or completely healthy until we contribute to the freedom and health of other.  We will never be fully free and completely healthy until we add our voices to the chorus of those who declare of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, “Never, ever again.”