Mississippi Burning Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner During Freedom Summer Voter Registration

On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers—James Chaney, 21, of Mississippi; Andrew Goodman, 20, of New York; and Michael Schwerner, 24, of New York—were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan with the direct participation of Neshoba County law enforcement officials. The killings, during the first week of the Freedom Summer voter registration campaign, demonstrated how local law enforcement had been captured by white supremacist violence to suppress Black political participation.

The three workers, all volunteers with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), were investigating the burning of Mt. Zion Methodist Church, which had been targeted because it was to be used as a Freedom School. Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price arrested them on a spurious traffic violation and held them until after dark, when he released them into a Klan ambush. Price personally participated in the murders alongside at least 18 Klansmen.

Their bodies were discovered 44 days later, buried in an earthen dam. Chaney, the only Black victim, had been brutally beaten before being shot. The FBI investigation, code-named “MIBURN” (Mississippi Burning), revealed systematic collusion between local law enforcement and the Klan. Sheriff Lawrence Rainey was a known Klan member; his department functioned as an enforcement arm of white supremacy.

Mississippi refused to prosecute the killers for murder. Federal prosecutors, unable to charge murder as a federal crime, instead prosecuted 18 men for conspiracy to deprive the victims of their civil rights. Deputy Sheriff Price, Klansman Sam Bowers, and five others were convicted in 1967—the first time in Mississippi history that anyone had been convicted of a civil rights crime. Sentences ranged from three to ten years; most served six years or less.

Freedom Summer brought approximately 1,000 volunteers, mostly white college students from the North, to Mississippi to register Black voters, run Freedom Schools, and challenge the segregated Mississippi Democratic Party. The volunteers faced constant violence: that summer, 37 Black churches were bombed or burned, 30 homes were bombed, 80 people were beaten, and at least four people besides the three workers were killed.

The murders and subsequent investigation revealed the total capture of local law enforcement by white supremacist terrorism. Police did not merely fail to protect civil rights workers; they actively participated in violence against them. The case demonstrated that in much of the South, the state itself—through its law enforcement arms—functioned as an instrument of racial terror, requiring federal intervention to secure basic constitutional rights.