On this day, June 21, in 1964, three civil rights workers were lynched by the Ku Klux Klan during what’s known as the “Freedom Summer.”
Mississippi police arrested civil rights workers James Cheney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner and handed them to the Klan.
The public outcry over the workers’ disappearance caused the FBI to investigate. Divers discovered the bodies of seven missing blacks while searching for the civil rights workers.
In 1967, seven Klansmen were convicted on conspiracy charges. Eight were acquitted. The cases of three men, including preacher Edgar Ray Killen, ended in a hung jury. One of the jurors said she could not convict a preacher. Four decades later, in 2005, Killen was convicted on the 41st anniversary of the murders.
Scott McCabe
