In the summer of 1964, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was helping register African-Americans to vote in Mississippi (Freedom Summer). On April 24, the Ku Klux Klan (which had more than 10,000 members in Mississippi) had burned 61 churches as a warning to blacks and white civil rights activists to stop their efforts for voting rights. In June, 1964, Mchael Schwerner and James Chaney (African-American) spoke to the congregation of a Baptist church. Soon after, the Klan burnt the church down. On July 21, Chaney, Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman went to visit the church. Schwerner and Goodman were northern whites. They were returning to Meridian with Chaney driving when the car was pulled over for speeding by sheriff’s deputy Cecil Price. At 4 P.M., the trio were put in jail in Philadelphia, Miss. They were not allowed a phone call. Price left. Around 10 P.M., Price returned, collected their fine, and released them. They were not seen again alive. CORE called all the jails when they were determined to be missing. There was no response from the Philadelphia jail. On June 22, the FBI began a kidnapping investigation under the “Lindbergh law”. President Lyndon Johnson had to force J. Edgar Hoover into taking the case. The case was called “Mississippi Burning”. Eventually, more than 200 agents worked the case. They and 400 US Navy sailors searched for the bodies. On June 23, the burnt remains of the car was found. It became a national story because two of the victims were white. (If only Chaney had been missing, there would have been no coverage.) In the search, 8 African-American bodies were found buried (one wore a CORE t-shirt). After 6 weeks, a tip from Highway Patrol officer Maynard King revealed the bodies were buried in an earthen dam. (King might have helped after a Mafia thug, called in by the FBI, tortured a conspirator into telling him where the bodies were.) The bodies were found 44 days after the murders. Since murder could only be charged by the state, which did not investigate, the FBI charged 21 men for violating the civil rights of the trio. 18 men were indicted. Before the trial, two of the indicted confessed.
It turned out Peace had informed the local Klan leader that the trio was being held in the jail. Baptist minister Edgar Killen called out some of his klansmen. After the trio was released they were chased by two cars and Price in his police car. They pulled them over. Alton Roberts (a 26-year-old dishonorably discharged Marine) shot Schwerner and Goodman in the head. James Jordan (one of the confessors) shot Chaney in the stomach and Roberts finished him with a head shot.. The Judge for the case was William Cox. He was a segregationist who had called blacks “chimpanzees” in his court. Earlier, he had thrown the case out, but the Supreme Court reinstated it. Surprisingly Cox was fair in this trial. The jury was all-white. 7 of the defendants (including Price and Klan Imperial Wizard Samuel Bowers were found guilty, but not Killen because a juror refused to find a minister guilty. The Cox gave them only 3-7 years in prison. When he was questioned about the leniency of the sentences, he said: “They killed one n—–, one Jew, and one white man. I gave them what they deserved.” None of the seven served more than 6 years. In 2005, the case was reopened and Killen was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years. He died in prison in 2018.
The murders did have a positive effect because LBJ was able to use the outrage to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedomsummer-murder/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Chaney,_Goodman,_and_Schwerner
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