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.
The outcry after their disappearance caused President Johnson to pressure J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to investigate the case. Navy divers discovered the bodies of seven other missing blacks while searching for the civil rights workers.
In 1967, seven Mississippi men were convicted on conspiracy charges. Eight other defendants were acquitted, and three had mistrials. Edgar Ray Killen was charged with three counts of murder on Jan. 7, 2005, four decades later, when he was 80 years old. He was convicted of manslaughter on June 21, the 41st anniversary of the murders.
– Liz Essley
