On this day, June 21, in 1964, three civil rights workers were lynched by members of the Ku Klux Klan during what is known as the Freedom Summer.

Police arrested and detained James Cheney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Neshoba County, Miss., before handing them over, after dark, into the hands of Klan members, who beat and murdered them before burying their bodies in an earthen dam.