The Sixties: The Center Cannot Hold - Bodies of Three Civil Rights Workers Found – August 6, 1964 (22)

On August 6, 1964 - less than one month after LBJ signed the civil rights act - three civil rights workers were murdered in Sandtown, Mississippi.

Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman had gone to Sandtown to help register blacks to vote.  While in Sandtown, they also asked about the church that had recently been burned.

They were arrested for speeding; this was the last anyone had seen them alive.

Their bodies were buried in a dirt dam near the burned church in Neshoba County, near Sandtown, Mississippi.

At first, suspicion for the murders of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman fell on the local police who had arrested them for speeding.

Lawrence Rainey, sheriff, and Cecil Price, deputy police chief were arrested and convicted for conspiracy, but not for murder.

Over time,  seven members of the Ku Klux Klan were arrested for their murders and convicted of civil rights violations.

Murder charges were not pressed against these members of the KKK.  They were imprisoned, but only for a short period.

Even though the FBI was involved in this case from the beginning, the FBI's involvement was controversial.

According to the local Mississippi law enforcement (which was against the FBI involvement) the FBI agents were not letting the local law enforcement carry out their routine investigations, and claimed the FBI took over the case and usurped the powers of the state.

A Mississippi investigator, A.L. Hopkins, stated:

"The actions and methods of members of the Justice Department, especially the FBI, in the course of their current investigation. . . in my opinion, amount to encroachment and usurpation of the rights and powers of this state."

The FBI found Schwerner's station wagon had been burned; they did not inform any one of this fact.

The FBI allegedly bribed people for information, for sums up to $1 million.

It was another sad commentary of a day long gone when we recognize now how severe the situation was in civil rights and how long overdue the civil rights act was.

One hopes, that this day is long gone and that we have progressed beyond this point. Still, there is much work to do.

Source: http://www.gfsnet.org/msweb/sixties/emily3civilrights.htm

This series, "The Sixties" is a look into some of the news events that made history. Everything written about in this series re-examines events as they happened, on a day-by-day basis, as a way for us to remember The Sixties…Many stories here are about civil rights; many also are political, some are focused on the pop culture.

Soon, I will provide a link of all previously published stories in this series. Recent articles include the day the Beatles arrived in New York and JFK's Assassination.

This series is published Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.