Jimmy Snowden

James Snowden (September 21, 1933 ) was an American truck driver and white supremacist. He was arrested as a co-conspirator in the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in Philadelphia, Mississippi, for transporting the kidnapped activists to a remote location to be killed. He was a member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He was sentenced in 1967 by federal district judge William Cox to three years for depriving the murdered men of their civil rights.

Background Snowden was born in Lauderdale County, Mississippi, as the second youngest child to William D. Snowden and Essie A. Snowden. He had two sisters, Myrtle E. Snowden and Mary H. Snowden, and two brothers, William E. Snowden and John C. Snowden. At the time of the murders, aged 31, Snowden lived in Meridian, where he worked for Meridian Laundry.

Conviction Snowden was indicted on February 28, 1967. He was later convicted of violating the civil rights of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner on October 20, 1967. On December 29, 1967, Judge William Harold Cox sentenced Snowden to three years in federal prison. and then transferred to FCI Lompoc until his release on August 29, 1972. Snowden was reportedly "roughed up" in prison by black inmates. When he was released from prison, Snowden returned to trucking jobs in Meridian. They had one son, Davie Snowden (b. 1963), and two daughters, Vicky L Snowden and Brenda Faye Snowden. Davie Snowden was arrested for shoplifting in July 2013. Snowden's grandson, Thomas Davie Snowden (b. 1991) was arrested October 2012 in Mobile, Alabama, as a fugitive.

While reporting about the death of fellow trial defendant Olen Lovell Burrage on March 18, 2013, New York Times journalist Douglas Martin claimed that James T. Harris was the only surviving defendant who was tried for the murders, thus implying that Snowden had died by this point in time.