The Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner

Prologue: A Road in Mississippi

It’s a stretch of road you could easily miss—maybe just two ruts cutting through the pine woods outside Philadelphia, Mississippi. On the morning of June 22, 1964, nothing much moved along Highway 19 except the hum of insects and the uneasy glance of a deputy making his rounds. But somewhere down that road, under an ashen sky, a battered blue station wagon sat empty. Its doors closed. Three men—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner—had entered the backwoods, and disappeared.

In the days that followed, that muddy shoulder became the epicenter of a modern reckoning.

Before the Disappearance: Mississippi’s Summer of Reckoning

The summer of 1964—what would come to be called "Freedom Summer"—was no ordinary southern season. For months, students and volunteers, many fresh-faced and idealistic, had poured into Mississippi with one purpose: to help Black citizens register to vote. For the architects of the project—in particular, groups like the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)—the challenge was monumental. Mississippi had one of the lowest Black voter registration rates in the country, and among the highest levels of resistance to desegregation.

James Chaney was 21, a soft-spoken Mississippi native, Black, with deep ties to Meridian and a hopeful but wary outlook. Michael Schwerner, 24, and Andrew Goodman, 20, had both traveled South from New York. Schwerner and Goodman were Jewish, outsiders in a land where distrust of “northern agitators” ran as deep as the Tallahatchie. Together, they drove the rural roads, visiting churches, passing out leaflets, and registering as many voters as they could.

Their work didn’t go unnoticed. To local white power structures—especially the Ku Klux Klan—it was an affront. Sometimes the warning came in muttered threats. Other times, like June 16, 1964, it arrived as fire.

That afternoon, Mt. Zion Methodist Church—used by civil rights organizers as a community center—was reduced to char and ruins. Klan members had torched the building and beaten several church members for refusing to betray the whereabouts of “outside agitators.” The signal was unmistakable.

June 21: Sunday in Philadelphia

On June 21, Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner made the drive out to Mt. Zion to check on the congregation and document the destruction. By afternoon, the heat shimmered off the sagging roof beams, and the smell of smoke still lingered in the air.

They planned a quick return to Meridian, but as dusk fell outside Philadelphia, their car was stopped by Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price—a man whose badge marked him as law, but whose allegiance was with the local Klan. Price charged them with speeding. All three were placed in the Neshoba County jail.

For seven hours, Wahabi-inspired chants from a nearby music tent drifted through the night air. At 10:00 PM, Price let them go. The men climbed into their station wagon and drove out of Philadelphia.

What they didn’t know was that Price had tipped off fellow Klan members. The station wagon was followed down the narrow, dark roads leading away from town. Before they could reach the county line, flashing headlights signaled them to stop once more.

In the Woods: Night of Violence

Around midnight, under a sky empty of moon or hope, the trio was pulled over again. This time, the law and the Klan were one and the same. Edgar Ray Killen, a Baptist preacher and local Klan organizer, coordinated the operation.

The three young men were driven at gunpoint to a secluded spot near an earthen dam on the property of Olen Burrage, another Klansman. It’s there the violence peels away from euphemism. Schwerner was shot first, a single round to the chest. Goodman, then Chaney. Chaney endured a savage beating on top of the fatal gunshot—a Black man punished more brutally, then left with his friends in a shallow grave. The bodies were buried under fifteen feet of gravel and dirt. The only witnesses were the stars overhead and the silent pines.

The Next Morning: A Search Begins

When news spread that the three men hadn’t returned to Meridian on schedule, a quiet dread settled in the offices of CORE and SNCC. Mississippi had seen disappearances before. Fears accelerated when the burned car—its frame hidden in the woods—was found by search parties.

What followed was a search unlike any the state had ever witnessed. At first, state and local authorities were slow to act. But soon, the FBI arrived, driven to the scene by pressure from Washington and the outcry of families and activists. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy put the full weight of federal power behind the investigation.

The operation—code-named MIBURN, for “Mississippi Burning”—brought dozens of agents, Navy divers, and even an armored personnel carrier into Neshoba County. Fields, rivers, and swamps were combed for weeks. The search for the three missing men turned up other horrors: the remains of eight Black men, all killed with little fanfare, their deaths unreported. But Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner remained missing.

Discovery: The Secret Grave

On August 4, 1964, an informant, paid by the FBI, broke the silence. Drawing a rough map, he led agents to the dam on Burrage’s farm. There, under earth moved with mechanical shovels, the bodies were found—shawled in rotting clothes, bones broken, shot, beaten.

The discovery knocked the wind from the whole country. Newspaper headlines screamed, “Mississippi: Murder State.” President Lyndon B. Johnson expressed his sorrow. Vigils and protests grew in Northern cities, and even among those insulated from Southern violence, the truth was raw and undeniable. It exposed a system rotten not just at the fringes, but at its core.

A Slow March Toward Justice

The aftermath played out not in swift condemnation, but in a slow, grinding evolution. Mississippi authorities refused to file murder charges. Only federal prosecutors, using rarely-invoked civil rights statutes, could bring any indictment. In 1967—three years after the crime—eighteen men were charged with violating the civil rights of the victims. Seven were found guilty, among them Deputy Price.

The penalties? Most served less than six years. Killen, the plot’s ringleader, walked free when his jury deadlocked.

But the trial was not without consequence. The murder of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner exposed the intimacy of the partnership between the South’s powerbrokers and the Klan. Americans saw—on their televisions, in Life magazine, on the front page—what it really meant to risk everything in the name of justice.

The Rippling Consequence: Civil Rights Legislation

It’s often said that the blood of martyrs waters the tree of freedom. That summer, their sacrifice poured sunlight into the nation’s conscience. National outrage accelerated the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, soon after, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These laws—too late for Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner—struck directly at the machinery of oppression. That, at last, was their legacy.

Remembrance, Justice, and Legacy

For decades, the scars in Neshoba County remained. Wooden crosses staked the site of Mt. Zion church. Local authorities did little to heal the bitterness. Only much later, in 2005—over four decades after that night—was Edgar Ray Killen convicted of manslaughter. His sentence: 60 years in prison, a symbolic reckoning with ghosts long ignored.

Still, for the families and those in the movement, justice did not feel complete. No sentence could replace what had been lost: youth, promise, hope. But the work carried on. Each June, bells ring for Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. Children learn their names in Mississippi classrooms. On anniversaries, old activists stand in those same fields, remembering and telling the story once more.

What We Know Now

The documents are public now—FBI files, confessions, taped interviews. There’s no doubt about who plotted and pulled the triggers. There’s no mystery about the complicity of police, or the courage of those who stood up anyway.

We remember their names because their courage helped transform a country. We remember, too, that the rhythms of violence and change are never just stories—always real, always close, always waiting for someone willing to risk driving down that empty road.