Civil Rights Events

Mississippi -- Freedom Summer

Murder

 

Andy Goodman's fateful journey to Mississippi began in Manhattan, where he grew up in an upper-middle class family on the Upper West Side. His younger brother, David, says Andy was focused on fairness from an early age - whether it was protecting a little sibling from bullies or protesting social injustices around the country. As a teenager, Andy would take his younger brother to Woolworths, where people demonstrated against school segregation in the south.

 

"He just said ... it's unfair that because of the color of your skin, you should go to a lousy school," David Goodman (Andy’s brother) said. "It was an issue of fairness to him" (Carter 1).

 

Carolyn Goodmen, Andy’s mother, said later: All we knew is he was going to go and be trained, and we gave him permission. Why? Because we couldn’t talk out of two sides of our mouths. We couldn’t say, “This is a horror,” and then say, “Well, it’s okay for other kids. And it’s certainly okay for black kids. But not for my white, middle class son. I don’t want anything to happen to him. I don’t want him to be beaten, I don’t want him to be ending up in jail,” and so on. So off he went to Ohio (Mississippi 3).

 

That sense of social justice led Andy Goodman to Ohio in June 1964. It was there, at a training session for the Congress of Racial Equality, that the Queens College student would meet James Chaney, a black 21-year-old from Mississippi, and Michael Schwerner, a white 24-year-old from New York. [They were working for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in nearby Meridian, Mississippi]  They were training hundreds of other volunteers on how to handle the racial turmoil and potential harassment awaiting them in Mississippi (Carter 2).

 

Chaney, a plasterer, had grown up in Meridian in nearby Lauderdale County, and even as a young student had been interested in civil rights work. Schwerner, a Jewish New Yorker, came south to Meridian to set up the COFO office because he believed he could help prevent the spread of hate that had resulted in the Holocaust, an event that had taken the lives of his family members. Chaney volunteered at the Meridian office, and the two young men began to make visits to Neshoba County searching for residents to sponsor voter registration drives and freedom schools (Murder 1).

 

On Memorial Day 1964, Schwerner and Chaney had spoken to the congregation at Mount Zion in rural Neshoba County about setting up a Freedom School, a type of alternative middle and high school that helped to organize African Americans for political and cultural engagement (Carter 1).

 

Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Klu Klux Klan of Mississippi, [had] sent word in May, 1964 to the Klansmen of Lauderdale and Neshoba counties that it was time to "activate Plan 4." Plan 4 provided for "the elimination" of the despised civil rights activist Michael Schwerner, who the Klan called "Goatee" or "Jew-Boy." Schwerner, the first white civil rights worker based outside of the capital of Jackson, had earned the enmity of the Klan by organizing a black boycott of a white-owned business and aggressively trying to register blacks in and around Meridian to vote.

 

The Klan's first attempt to eliminate Schwerner came on June 16, 1964 in the rural Neshoba County community of Longdale. Schwerner had visited Longdale on Memorial Day to ask permission of the black congregation at Mount Zion Church to use their church as the site of a "Freedom School." The Klan knew of Schwerner's Memorial Day visit to Longdale and expected him to return for a business meeting held at the church on the evening of June 16. About 10 p.m., when the Mount Zion meeting broke up, seven black men and three black women left the building to discover thirty men lined up in military fashion with rifles and shotguns. More men were gathered at the rear of the church. Frustrated when their search for "Jew-Boy" was unsuccessful, some of the Klan members began beating the departing blacks. Ten gallons of gasoline were removed from one of the Klan members' cars and spread around the inside of the church. Mount Zion Church was soon engulfed in flames (Linder Trial 2-3).

 

While in Ohio, Schwerner got word to the church burning.  He and Chaney needed a volunteer to help them investigate the fire and they were quickly impressed by the level-headed Goodman. The three men drove down to Mississippi on June 20 … (Smith 2-3).

 

On June 21, Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman drove from Meridian to Neshoba County to talk to the church members at Mount Zion (Carter 2).

 

At 3 p.m. the three in the highly visible blue Core-wagon, set off to return to Meridan, Ms. Stationed at the Core office in Meridian was Core worker, Sue Brown, who was told by Schwerner if the three weren't back by 4:30 p.m., then they were in trouble. Deciding that Highway 16 was a safer route, the three turned onto it, headed west, through Philadelphia, Ms, back to Meridan. A few miles outside of Philadelphia, Klan member, Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, spotted the CORE wagon on the highway (Montaldo 4).

 

In 1964, Cecil Price, at age 27, was "a younger and less formidable copy" of Sheriff Rainey. The former dairy supplies salesman and then fire chief was said to lack Rainey's friendliness. He was tight-lipped and suspicious of everybody.

 

Price, a Klansman, seemed to derive great pleasure from terrorizing Neshoba County blacks. One night he showed up at a roadhouse popular with young blacks, drew his six-shooter and shouted "All you nigger men get your hands on the wall, and all you nigger women do the Dog" (Linder Cecil 1).

 

Not only did Price spot the car, but he also recognized the driver, James Chaney. The Klan hated Chaney, who was a black activist and a born Mississippian. Price pulled the wagon over and arrested and jailed the three students for being under suspicion of arson in the Mount Zion Church fire (Montaldo 5).

 

Despite the fact that the schedule of fines for speeding was posted on the wall, Price said the three men would have to remain in jail until the Justice of the Peace arrived to process the fine. Schwerner asked to make a phone call, but Price denied the request and left the jail. In Meridian, CORE staff began calling nearby jails and police stations, inquiring about the three men -- their standard procedure when organizers failed to return on time. Minnie Herring, the jailer’s wife, claimed there was no phone call on June 21, but CORE records show a call to the Philadelphia jail around 5:30pm (Murder in Mississippi 2).

 

Carolyn Goodman made this public plea.  As the parent of one of the boys who are missing, I am making this plea to all parents everywhere, particularly to the parents of Mississippi. I want to beg them to cooperate in every way possible, in the search for these three boys, and to come forward with any information of any kind which will help in the search.

 

Michael Schwerner’s wife Rita declared: … if all the federal authorities are at the beck and call of the government are unable to do so, I as just one individual will attempt to do so. If this means driving every back road, every dirt road, every alley in the county of Neshoba, I will do it.

 

Former governor Ross Barnett had this to say:…  we’re sorry for any children, any youngsters whose parents do not insist that they stay away from other states, trying to tell people of other states how to conduct their affairs. Because they do not know what it’s all about. And it’s pitiful that parents have not trained their children in the way that they should have. They ought to stay at home and work. They ought to stay at home and tend to their own business.  (Mississippi 5, 7).

 

The FBI investigating the disappearance of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi in June 1964 were finally able to piece together the events that took place because of Ku Klux Klan informants who were there the evening of the murders.

 

When in the Neshoba County jail, Schwerner asked to make a phone call and the request was refused.

 

Price contacted Klansmen, Edgar Ray Killen, and informed him that he captured Schwerner.

 

Killen called Neshoba and Lauderdale county Klansmen and organized a group for what was referred to as some "butt ripping." A meeting was held at a drive-in in Meridian with local Klan leaders.

 

Another meeting was held later when it was decided that some of the younger Klan members would do the actual killings of the three civil right workers.

 

Killen instructed the younger Klan members to purchase rubber gloves and they all met at 8:15 p.m., reviewed the plan on how the killings would take place and drove by the jail where the three were being held.

 

Killen then left the group to attend a wake for his deceased uncle.

 

Price freed the three jailed men around 10 p.m. and followed them as they drove down Highway 19.

 

A high-speed chase between Price and the CORE group ensued, and Chaney, who was driving, soon stopped the car and the three surrendered to Price.

 

The three men were placed in Price's patrol car and Price, followed by two cars of young Klan members, drove down a dirt road called Rock Cut Road (Montaldo 5-8).

 

It is not known whether the three were beaten before they were killed. Klan informants deny that they were, but there is some physical evidence to the contrary. What is known is that a twenty-six-year-old dishonorably discharged ex-Marine, Wayne Roberts, was the trigger man, shooting first Schwerner, then Goodman, then Chaney, all at point blank range. (FBI informant James Jordan, according to a second informant present at the killings, Doyle Barnette, also fired two shots at Chaney.) The bodies of the three civil rights workers were taken to a dam site at the 253-acre Old Jolly Farm. The farm was owned by Philadelphia businessman Olen Burrage who reportedly had announced at a Klan meeting when the impending arrival in Mississippi of an army of civil rights workers was discussed, "Hell, I've got a dam that'll hold a hundred of them." The bodies were placed together in a hollow at the dam site and then covered with tons of dirt by a Caterpillar D-4 (Linder Trial 7).

 

At 12:30 a.m., Price and Klan member, Neshoba County Sheriff Rainey met. 

 

On August 4, 1964, the FBI received information about the location of the bodies and they were uncovered at the dam site at the Old Jolly Farm (Montaldo 8).

 

Here is a different version of the killings.

 

As they were passing through Philadelphia, Mississippi, they were pulled over by a deputy sheriff and arrested for speeding. They arrived at the jail at 4 p.m. and were released around 10 p.m. that night. The activists were followed by a lynch mob of at least nine men, including a deputy and a local police officer.

 

When the Klansmen caught up to Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman, they forced the men into one of the mob’s vehicles and drove them to a secluded county road. Chaney, a black man, was beaten with chains, castrated, and shot while Schwerner and Goodman, the two white activists, were forced to watch. When Schwerner cradled Chaney in his arms … a Klansman asked, “Are you that n***** lover?” When Schwener replied, “Sir, I understand your concern” he was shot in the heart. Goodman attempted to run and was also shot. The bodies were then taken to a farm pond where Herman Tucker was waiting. Tucker used a bulldozer on the property to cover the bodies with dirt. An autopsy revealed that Goodman was likely buried alive since there was red clay dirt in his lungs and in his grasped fists. Evidence at the burial site appears to show he was trying to dig his way out (Carter 2-3).

 

At 12:30 A.M., concerned activist leaders placed a call to John Doar, the Justice Department's point man in Mississippi. Less than a week earlier Doar had been in Oxford, Ohio warning Summer Project volunteers that there was "no federal police force" that could protect them from expected trouble in Mississippi. Doar feared the worst. By 6:00 A.M., Doar had invested the FBI with the power to investigate a possible violation of federal law (Linder Trial 8).

 

“Yesterday morning, three of our people left Meridian, Mississippi to investigate a church burning in Neshoba County,” project director Bob Moses informed an auditorium of volunteers on June 22, 1964. They were planning to work in Mississippi that summer and were being trained at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio. “They haven’t come back and we haven’t heard from them.”

 

The assumption of movement workers was that they were dead (Bodies 1).

 

The morning after the civil rights workers' disappearance, the phone rang in the office of Meridian-based FBI agent John Proctor. (In the movie "Mississippi Burning," the character played by Gene Hackman is loosely based on Proctor.) Within hours, Proctor was in Neshoba County interviewing blacks, community leaders, Sheriff Rainey, and Deputy Price. Proctor was a Alabama native who had successfully cultivated relationships with all sorts of people, including local law enforcement officers, who might aid in his investigations. After his interview with Cecil Price, the Deputy slapped Proctor on the back and said, "Hell, John, let's have a drink." Price went to his car and pulled contraband liquor out of his trunk.

 

By the next day, June 23, Proctor had been joined by ten newly arrived special agents and Harry Maynor, his New Orleans-based supervisor (Linder Trial 9).

 

Because two of the three missing men were white with important northern connections, their disappearance quickly captured America’s attention. “The other Philadelphia” made front page headlines as scores of journalists and FBI agents flocked to the state. Within days, marchers were picketing federal buildings in Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C.

 

Rita Schwerner [Michael’s wife] had no allusions about the ugly truth that was motivating the search for her husband. “I personally suspect that Mr. Chaney, who is a native Mississippi Negro, had been alone at the time of the disappearance, that this case, like so many others that have come before, would have gone completely unnoticed,” she told the press.

 

In the coming weeks, more than 150 FBI agents and 200 sailors from the Meridian Naval Air Station descended upon the state, yet federal policy towards the protection of civil rights workers in the South did not change. President Johnson, convinced that the entire incident was merely a publicity stunt, worried that if he started “house mothering each [volunteer’s family] that’s gone down there and that doesn’t show up, that we’ll have this White House full of people every day asking for sympathy” (Bodies 1, 4-5).

 

What the KKK had not counted on was the national attention that the three civil rights workers disappearance would ignite. … President, Lyndon B. Johnson put the pressure on J. Edgar Hoover to get the case solved. The first FBI office in Mississippi was opened and the military bused sailors into Neshoba County to help search for the missing men (Montaldo 5).

 

[On June 23] FBI agents found the [burned, still smoldering] remains of the car driven by the activists near a river in northeast Neshoba County. … [Shortly thereafter, Joseph Sullivan, the FBI's Major Case Inspector, arrived on the scene]

 

Fearing the men were dead, the federal government sent hundreds of sailors from a nearby naval air station to search the swamps for the bodies. Although they didn’t find the bodies of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, the Navy divers who dragged the river discovered two other young black activists, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore; a 14-year-old named Herbert Oarsby, found wearing a CORE T-shirt; and five other black men who remained unidentified. (Carter 4-5).

 

It soon became apparent to Inspector Sullivan the case "would ultimately be solved by conducting an investigation rather than a search." It turned out to be an extraordinarily difficult investigation. Neshoba County residents, many of whom either participated in the conspiracy or knew of it, were tight-lipped. Proctor found that some of his most useful information came from kids, so he would stuff candy in his pockets before setting out for a day's schedule of interviews. A promise of $30,000 in reward money finally brought forward information, passed through an intermediary, concerning the location of the bodies.

 

(Jerry Mitchell, an investigative reporter with Meridian's Clarion Ledger, reported in a 2010 story that highway patrolman Maynard King told Sullivan the location of the bodies. Mitchell also reported that the FBI's promise of a $30,000 reward was made after the FBI learned the location of the bodies and was part of a strategy to increase finger-pointing and suspicion within the Klan.) On August 4, 1964, John Proctor was at the Old Jolly Farm to take photographs of the bodies as they were uncovered at the dam site. Inspector Sullivan invited Price to the dam site to help in the removal of the bodies. Sullivan was interested in observing the reaction of the Deputy, who was by then under heavy suspicion. Proctor noted that "Price picked up a shovel and dug right in, and gave no indication whatsoever that any of it bothered him" (Linder 10-11).

 

The digging began early on the morning of August 4, six weeks after the men had first gone missing. After several hours of digging and 14 feet and 10 inches deep into the earth, the bodies of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney were finally discovered lying face down, side by side.

 

An integrated burial in Mississippi was out of the question. Chaney was buried on a hilltop outside of Meridian, and the bodies of Schwerner and Goodman were flown to New York (Bodies 5-6).

 

David Dennis, Jr., son of the CORE leader who co-supervised the Freedom Summer project with Bob Moses, wrote an interesting article August 30, 2017, for Still Crew.  Excerpts follow.

 

As Mississippi director for the Congress of Racial Equality, my dad, David Dennis, Sr., sent Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner to Longdale, MS to investigate a bombing at the Mount Zion church. What my father didn’t know at the time, but is sure of to this day, is that the KKK perpetrated the bombing to lure the three workers out and kill them. The Klan also prioritized Mickey Schwerner as a target. The young, fiery organizer was a dynamo at rallying black people to register to vote. Schwerner offended the Klan most of all because he was white. A traitor. And he was Jewish.

 

The three activists were taken out of that station wagon and shot. Evidence indicates Andrew Goodman was buried alive next to the bodies of Chaney and Schwerner, in pre-prepared graves. There are also variations of the story that indicate that Schwerner and Goodman were shot once in the heart and died immediately and that James Chaney was tortured before being killed. The murders were a culmination of a thoroughly planned conspiracy that started with the burning down of Mt. Zion. A plan that went from the sheriff all the way down to local high school kids. …

 

My father planned to be with the three men when they took the trip to investigate the church bombing. He was supposed to be riding with them when they were murdered. However, his bronchitis got in the way and the three men convinced him to just go home and take care of it. So he reluctantly drove to Shreveport, LA to be with his mother and recover. That was the last time he saw them. My father awaited phone calls about the workers’ whereabouts as standard procedure any time he dispatched someone for an assignment. As soon as he learned the men hadn’t checked in, he knew they were dead. Everyone did. White and black.

 

However, the lynch mob that murdered the men hid the bodies under a dam built on the property of one of the Klansmen, turning the crime into a missing persons story. And since two of the missing men were white, it became national news.

 

For 44 whole days, a country speculated on the whereabouts of the three slain workers. What haunts my father as much as anything else that happened with the three workers is the fact that during the search, more bodies turned up. Slain black men, lynched by the Klan. Local Klan members and even J. Edgar Hoover, who in May stated that “outsiders” coming to Mississippi for Freedom Summer would not be protected by the FBI, fanned the flames of conspiracy, insinuating the three men were Communists who were either killed by their own or fled to Cuba. It seemed likely that the bodies would never be found. If not for [comedian and celebrity civil rights activist] Dick Gregory.

 

… he immediately met with James Farmer, the head of CORE. Gregory, Farmer and a caravan of 16 cars headed to Philadelphia to try to find the men. Gregory, like everyone else, knew those men were dead.

 

… Gregory’s caravan was stopped before being able to conduct a full search, but he was granted an audience with Sheriff Rainey.  …

 

…

 

Gregory noticed a nervousness in the meeting with the Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey, who was a top conspirator to the murders, Deputy Sheriff Cecil Ray Price, who was part of the lynch mob, the Chief Investigator of the State Highway Police and a city attorney. Also, he noticed the city attorney would pipe in and answer all of the questions. Gregory cut the meeting short. He had all he needed. It became clear this was a government-sponsored lynching perpetrated by Neshoba County law enforcement.

 

Later, Gregory would say that he put his finger in Rainey’s face and said, “You know you did it. And we’re going to get you!” Gregory presented a singular problem for Rainey and his boys: he was a “nigger” they couldn’t make disappear.

 

Gregory knew that there wouldn’t be an investigation in earnest, so he had a plan.

 

I told Farmer, “Jim, I’ve got the wildest idea.” He said, “ What?” I said, “You know, the only way we’re gonna get it out is with large sums of money. If you’ll put up $100,000, we’ll break this case in one week.”

 

The comedian wasn’t able to get the full $100,000 but he was able to get $25,000 thanks to a phone call to Hugh Hefner.  …

 

Gregory drove to Meridian and announced a $25,000 reward for any information on the location of Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner. The next day, the FBI put out their own $30,000 reward. However it was Gregory who would receive a tip. “I received a letter quite some time ago that practically pinpointed the spot where the bodies were found,” he continued to tell Mississippi Eyewitness shortly after the bodies were found. “I gave this letter to the FBI and the FBI denied that the letter was any good. But they never denied the location stated in the letter.”

 

As far as many civil rights activists are concerned, it was the pressure Dick Gregory put on the FBI that led to the discovery of the three workers’ bodies. Anyone in Mississippi, my father included, believe the FBI always knew where the bodies were and only revealed where the bodies were after finding out Gregory also had that information. The importance of the discovery of those three bodies can’t be overstated as it revealed, once again, the hellish hatred resting in the heart of Mississippi for black people simply trying to get access to vote. The discovery of the bodies killed conspiracy theories and propaganda that wanted to convince the public that the three men had fled or weren’t victims of racial violence. And the revelation that the men were murdered provided the final straw, creating enough fervor for the 1964 Civil Rights Act to pass Congress (Dennis 1-11).

 

 

Works cited:

 

“Bodies of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner Discovered.”  SNCC Digital Gateway, SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University.  Web.  https://snccdigital.org/events/bodies-chaney-goodman-schwerner-discovered/

 

Carter, Joe.  “9 Things You Should Know About the ‘Mississippi Burning’ Murders.”  TGC, the Gospel Coalition.  January 13, 2018.  Web.  https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-know-mississippi-burning-murders/

 

Dennis Jr., David.  “How Dick Gregory Forced the FBI to Find The Bodies of Three Civil Rights Workers Slain in Mississippi.”  Still Crew.  August 30, 2017.  Web.  https://stillcrew.com/how-dick-gregory-forced-the-fbi-to-find-the-bodies-of-goodman-chaney-and-schwerner-fa9790c49ad4

 

Linder, Douglas O.  “Cecil Price.”  Famous Trials.  Web.  https://famous-trials.com/mississippi-burningtrial/1971-price

 

Linder, Douglas O.  “The "Mississippi Burning" Trial: An Account.” Famous Trials,  Web.  https://famous-trials.com/mississippi-burningtrial/1955-home

   

Montaldo, Charles.  "The Mississippi Burning Case." ThoughtCo.  Oct. 25, 2018.  Web.  https://www.thoughtco.com/the-mississippi-burning-case-972177

 

“Mississippi Freedom Summer Claims Three Young Victims.”  nbclearn.com.  Web.  http://www.nbclearn.com/finishing-the-dream/1964-spotlights/cuecard/48786

 

“Murder in Mississippi.”  American Experience.  Web.  https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedomsummer-murder/

 

“The Murder of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.”  Mississippi Civil Rights Project.  Web.  https://mscivilrightsproject.org/neshoba/event-neshoba/the-murder-of-chaney-goodman-and-schwerner/

 

Smith, Stephen.  “‘Mississippi Burning’ murders resonate 50 years later.”  CBSNews.  June 20, 2014.  Web.  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mississippi-burning-murders-resonate-50-years-later/