Freedom Summer murders

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The Freedom Summer murders, also called the Mississippi Burning murders, the murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner and the Mississippi civil rights workers' murders, were a triple homicide that occurred on June 21, 1964, in Neshoba County, Mississippi. A lynch mob consisting of members of the Ku Klux Klan and the Neshoba County Sheriff's Department abducted three civil rights activists - James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner - while they were driving out of Neshoba County and shot them at an isolated intersection. Seven members of the mob were convicted of violating the victims' civil rights in a 1967 federal trial, and an eighth was convicted of manslaughter in 2005. The case inspired the film Mississippi Burning.

History

Murders

On June 21, 1964, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, all members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), travelled to Neshoba County to help African-Americans register to vote. Samuel Bowers, Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, ordered his followers to deal with Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. Several Klansmen burned down the Mount Zion Methodist Church in Longdale, the location of a previous voting drive, in order to lure the three there.

Following a visit to Longdale, the activists were on their way to Meridian when Sheriff's Deputy Cecil Price pulled them over for speeding and arrested them. While they were in jail, a group of local Klansmen began conspiring to kill them. Deputy Price and Klansman Edgar Ray Killen assembled a group of men to deal with the activists. The three were released from jail at 10 p.m. and drove towards the town of Meridian, tailed by Deputy Price. Two other cars, driven by Billy Posey and Horace Barnette, were waiting nearby with the lynch mob members inside drinking and arguing about who would kill the activists. Police officer Other N. Burkes drove up to Barnette's car and told the group "They're going on 19 towards Meridian. Follow them!". The two carloads then set out after the activists, although Posey's car broke down and the inhabitants were forced to transfer to Barnette's car.

Deputy Price caught up to the activist's station wagon on Road 492, forced them to stop and get in his car and drove them to the secluded intersection between County Road 515 and County Road 284. They were then forced to get out. One of the Klansmen, Alton Wayne Roberts, grabbed Schwerner and asked "Are you that nigger lover?". Schwerner replied "Sir, I know how you feel" and was shot in the heart by Roberts. He then shot Goodman in the chest. Chaney attempted to run but was shot down by Roberts and another Klansman, James Jordan. The mob beat Chaney and castrated him before Roberts shot him in the head. The bodies were driven to the Old Jolly Farm, where they were buried in an earthen dam. The station wagon was then taken away and burned.

Criminal proceedings

Mississippi state authorities were unwilling to properly investigate the disappearence of the activists, so the FBI was asked to investigate. Director J. Edgar Hoover was initially reluctant but was forced to send agents to investigate by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Meanwhile, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent 150 federal agents from New Orleans to deal with the case. The burnt station wagon was swiftly found, but the bodies of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner remained undiscovered despite the FBI offering a $25, 000 reward for information. However, the bodies were eventually discovered on August 4 after a confidential informant (later confirmed to be highway patrolman Maynard King) called in the location to the FBI. An autopsy suggested that Goodman had survived being shot and had been buried alive; fragments of red clay were found in his lungs and clutched in his fists.

By November 1964 the FBI had named 21 suspects in the murders. Eventually one of the suspects, James Jordan, confessed to the murders and agreed to testify in return for immunity. Mississippi state authorities refused to prosecute the case, so the FBI charged 18 of the suspects for civil rights violations, a federal crime. Those indicted were:

• Samuel Bowers
• Sheriff Lawrence A. Rainey
• Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price
• Edgar Ray Killen
• Alton W. Roberts
• Billy Posey
• Horace Barnette
• Jimmy Arledge
• Jimmy Snowden
• Olen Lovell Burrage
• Herman Tucker
• Bernard Akin
• Travis Barnette
• James T. Harris
• Frank J. Herndon
• Richard A. Willis
• Jerry Sharpe
• Ethel Glen Barnett

The case was presided over by pro-segregation judge William Cox, who attempted to dismiss the charges against all defendants except Rainey and Price, but was overruled by the Supreme Court. The trial proceeded, and was marked by several crises, including star witness James Jordan cracking under the pressure of multiple death threats and being hospitalized. Ultimately, Price, Bowers, Posey, Horace Barnette, Roberts, Arledge and Snowden were convicted and Rainey, Burrage, Tucker, Akin, Travis Barnette, Harris and Herndon were acquitted. The jury failed to reach a verdict on Sharpe, Ethel Barnett and Killen.

No further charges were brought in the case until 2005, when a grand jury indicted Edgar Ray Killen on three counts of manslaughter following a renewed campaign for justice. Killen, then 80 years old, was convicted on all three counts on January 6, 2005, and sentenced to 60 years in prison. Afterwards the Mississippi Attorney General declared that the case was closed as there was no further evidence to prosecute any living people.