Mississippi Burning

Mississippi Burning June 23, 1964,

A couple years later three civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman disappeared after visiting a church torched by the Ku Klux Klan

Agents ultimately located the men’s bodies buried 14 feet below an earthen dam on a local farm.

In 1963, Medgar Evers—the Mississippi field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was shot in the back by a sniper’s high-powered rifle.

The charred station wagon

The charred station wagon discovered by

FBI agents on June 23, 1964, That led to the

case name MIBURN.

It was June 1964 the start of Freedom Summer. a massive three month initiative to register southern blacks to vote and a direct response to the Klan’s own campaign of fear and intimidation.

A Klan called the KKK in Mississippi, in particular, was after a 24-year-old New Yorker named Michael Schwerner. He’d been especially active in organizing local boycotts of biased businesses and helping with voter registration.

On June 16, acting on a tip, a mob of armed KKK members descended on a local church meeting looking for him. Schwerner wasn’t there, so they torched the church and beat the churchgoers.

the trap was set: on June 20, Schwerner and two fellow volunteers—James Chaney and Andrew Goodman—headed south to investigate the fire.

June 24 to August 3

They launched a massive search for the young men—aided by the National Guard—through back roads, swamps, and hollows. At the same time, we were putting pressure on known members and developing informants who could infiltrate the Klan.

President Lyndon Johnson, we also opened a new field office in Jackson, Mississippi. In time, we’d developed a comprehensive analysis of the local KKK and its role in the disappearance.

And this is them after

This is what they looked like before the burning

5 p.m. , Sunday, June 21 1964,

June 22

Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked us to lead the case. By late morning, we’d blanketed the area with agents, who began intensive interviews.

This is what the FBI found

Circa 10:30 p.m., June 21:

Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were released and drove off in the direction of Meridian in a blue station wagon.

By preordained plan, KKK members followed. The activists were never heard from again.

After driving into Philadelphia, Mississippi, the three civil rights workers were arrested by a Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff named Cecil Price for speeding

More than a dozen suspects, including Deputy Price and his boss Sheriff Rainey, were indicted and arrested.

in the end, the Klan’s homicidal ways backfired. The murders galvanized the nation and provided impetus for the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2. And Killen eventually got his due; he was convicted of manslaughter on June 21, 2005, the 41 st anniversary of the crimes.