Alton Wayne Roberts (April 6, 1938 – September 11, 1999) was an American murderer and white supremacist. Roberts, a member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was convicted for his role in the 1964 Freedom Summer murders where he fatally shot two of the victims, Congress of Racial Equality civil rights activists Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. Roberts also shot the third activist, James Chaney, but some debate that it was another accomplice, James Jordan, who had killed him. Jordan had identified Roberts as Chaney's killer. In 1967, he was charged and convicted of depriving the slain activists of their civil rights.
Early life
Alton Wayne Roberts, who went by Wayne for most of his life, was born and raised in Meridian, Mississippi. He was the second youngest child of Clyde Cuthell Roberts and Eula Juanita Quinnelly and grew up with three brothers, Lee, Lloyd, and Raymond. Roberts played football during high school.
Roberts, then 26 years old, owned a bar and was working as a window salesman and a mobile home salesman, at the time of the murders. Prosecutors said that Roberts fired two of the three bullets found in Chaney's body. Roberts was one of many rounded up that day.
Roberts was indicted on February 28, 1967. He went to federal trial in Meridian on October 7 of that same year; 13 days later, he was convicted. At the sentencing hearing on December 29, 1967, Judge William Harold Cox sentenced Roberts to 10 years in federal prison. Roberts served no more than six years in McNeil Island Corrections Center, and was free on appeal bond.
Assault of Laurens Pierce
Roberts gained national recognition on January 27, 1965, for getting into a fight with CBS cameraman Laurens Pierce outside the federal courthouse in Meridian where he was on trial at the time. Roberts had grabbed Pierce's camera as he was taking pictures of him, which escalated when Roberts punched Pierce during the struggle. Jack Thornell took photos of Roberts beating up the reporter, with the incident becoming widely circulated in the U.S. press the next day. In 1968, Roberts filed a diversity suit against Pierce, alleging that he had been the one to initiate the altercation, which ultimately did not go to court.
Aftermath
According to People, Roberts was running a "seedy after-hours bar" in 1989.