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Michael "Mickey" Schwerner was the second son of Nathan and Ann Schwerner of New York City. Nathan, who operated a wig company, and Ann, a former high school science teacher, were both politically active in liberal causes and enrolled their sons for a short time in the progressive Walden School. When both the city and the school became excessively expensive for their middle-class earnings, the family moved to Westchester County in 1947, where Mickey and his brother attended public schools through high school.

At Cornell University, Mickey Schwerner majored in rural sociology and led the successful campaign to racially integrate his fraternity. Following his graduation in June 1961, he enrolled in the Columbia School of Social Work in New York City. This move meant that he was closer to Rita Levant, a student at Queens College whom he married the following year. Schwerner ultimately became disillusioned with the school's social work program, frustrated that their approach did not seem to address the root causes of poverty. In June 1962 he dropped out of Columbia and accepted a social work position at the Hamilton-Madison House, a settlement house that was located in a diverse and impoverished Lower East Side public housing project. Here, he ran a popular afterschool program that provided counseling, tutoring, and entertainment. However, at Hamilton-Madison, Schwerner's concerns about the impracticality of social work as a means to end poverty re-emerged. He became convinced that the pervasive racism must first be addressed in order to achieve economic equity.

In early 1963, driven by a shared determination to directly contribute to the civil rights movement, the Schwerners joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Mickey immediately began devoting six hours a day to the organization's community relations and housing committees in addition to continuing his full-time job at Hamilton-Madison. During this period he also volunteered with the Lower East Side Social Workers for Human Rights, the Lower East Side Youth for Equality, the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, and the Lower East Side Civil Rights Committee. In addition, the Schwerners began to participate in nonviolent direct-action protests. Mickey was first arrested as part of a protest on 4 July 1963 at a CORE-sponsored sit-in of a segregated amusement park in Gwynn Oaks, Maryland. Undeterred by the two days he spent in jail, the next week, the Schwerners joined pickets of a Manhattan construction site to protest the segregation of the city's building trade unions. Along with four others, the couple was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace.

Following the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in September 1963, Schwerner appealed to the national office of CORE seeking a posting in the South. That opportunity came when in November 1963, he and Rita were hired by CORE to run the Mississippi Summer Project (Freedom Summer) in Mississippi's second largest city, Meridian. The couple began their work in Meridian on 21 January 1964. In addition to a voter-registration campaign, the Schwerners organized a wide variety of activist projects. With the help of local volunteers like James Chaney and Sue Brown, the couple established a vibrant community center with a well-stocked library, entertainment and crafts for children, tutoring in math and reading, and an array of evening courses for adults, including literacy, voter registration, and vocational training. The community center became a hub of positive activity that the Schwerners were constantly expanding to further address the needs of Black community. Coordinating with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council, the Schwerners also began canvasing Black neighborhoods, recruiting families to support the Freedom School that would be held after the school term ended. Open to all school-age children, this six-week, summer program would provide children with classes in reading, math, Black history, and civics. Finally, the pair organized several challenges to segregated public accommodations, including downtown stores, the public library, and even churches, leading to Mickey's arrest alongside young activists more than once.

Throughout their time in Meridian, the young couple were frequent targets of threats and reprisals. They were repeatedly forced to move as their hosts faced retaliation from the white community for housing the civil rights activists. Their utilities were regularly cut off, often several times a week, and their telephone rang near constantly with graphic and profane threats of violence. Older NAACP members in Meridian also frequently warned the couple about the potential for the Ku Klux Klan, which was highly organized in the area, to respond violently to the couple's activities. Despite the obvious and systemic resistance to their presence, the Schwerners remained determined and optimistic about their work in Meridian.

Because of the intense visibility of their activism, Rita and especially Mickey garnered intense interest among members of the Klan, who frequently discussed and followed the man they nicknamed "Goatee." On 16 June 1964, at a joint meeting of more than seventy-five members of the Lauderdale and Neshoba County klaverns, members argued for a vote to sanction killing Mickey. Edgar Ray Killen, who was leading the meeting, assured the Klansmen that Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard, had already authorized his murder. The plan to execute Mickey came to fruition on 21 June 1964 when he was arrested, along with Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, by Klansman and Neshoba County Sherriff's Deputy Cecil Price. Price and a group of other Klansmen, many of whom were also law enforcement officers, murdered the three and concealed their bodies.

Even as federal agents searched for his body for more than a month, Schwerner's vision for the Freedom Summer Project came to fruition in Meridian. Most notably, the city had the largest Freedom School in the state with more than 250 students attending, including many students who viewed Schwerner as their mentor. Rita Schwerner Bender similarly continued the activism she had begun with Mickey, participating in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and working in Mississippi institutions for years and teaching classes on education and civil rights. She also engaged in a decades' long campaign to bring the killers of Chaney, Goodman, and her late husband to justice.

Posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm1682433/?ref_=nmtrv_trv">Barack Obama</a> 24 November 2014.

In 2008, his hometown of Pelham, New York, renamed a section of Harmon Avenue to &quot;Michael Schwerner Way&quot; in his honor.

Robert Reich, the American political commentator, professor, and author who served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, says that as a child, he was bullied and sought out the protection from older boys; one of whom was Michael Schwerner. Reich cites this event as an inspiration for his life&#39;s work-to &quot;fight the bullies, to protect the powerless, to make sure that the people without a voice have a voice.&quot;.

His murder, along with James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, by the Ku Klux Klan is depicted in the 1965 Norman Rockwell painting entitled, &quot;Murder in Mississippi&quot;, which is held in the permanent collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum.

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