Freedom Summer

In June 1964, the SNCC begins sending groups of students (mostly white) from the north down to Mississippi to register black voters. The SNCC calls this the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project — segregationists call it "the invasion." Before the month has ended, three volunteers with the project, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, are reported missing. Attorney General Robert Kennedy orders a full-scale FBI search, and President Lyndon Johnson authorizes the use of 200 Navy personnel. The bodies of the missing civil rights workers are found on August 4.

In December, the FBI charges 20 men, Ku Klux Klan members, with conspiracy in connection with the murders, and seven of them are convicted in 1967. No state murder charges are ever filed (a move to do this will be initiated in the year 2000).

Dr. Martin Luther King Holding Photograph of Three Civil Rights Workers Who Were Murdered 1964 Library of Congress