Mississippi Civil Rights Workers (Chaney, Goodman & Schwerner) Murders FBI Files & LBJ Phone Calls

Mississippi Civil Rights Workers (Chaney, Goodman, And Schwerner) Murders (MIBURN) FBI Files & President Johnson Telephone Audio Recordings

1,168 pages of FBI files and four hours and forty-three minutes of President Lyndon B. Johnson White House phone conversation audio recordings related to the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, also known as the Freedom Summer murders, the Mississippi civil rights workers' murders or the Mississippi Burning murders.

Mississippi was the center of the civil rights effort in 1964 known was the Freedom Summer. The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition of civil rights groups, arranged voter registration drives, and orientation for its registrars had begun in mid-June.

In 1964 members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were on the look-out for a 24-year-old New Yorker named Michael Schwerner. He’d been especially active in organizing local boycotts of biased businesses and helping with voter registration. On June 16, acting on a tip, a mob of armed KKK members descended on a church meeting at Mount Zion Church in Neshoba County looking for him. Schwerner wasn’t there, so they torched the church and beat the churchgoers.

James Chaney and Andrew Goodman headed south to investigate the fire. The next afternoon, they interviewed several witnesses and went to meet with fellow activists.

After driving into Philadelphia, Mississippi, the three civil rights workers were arrested by Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, allegedly for speeding. At 10:30 p.m., June 21: Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were released and drove off in the direction of Meridian in a blue station wagon. By rearraigned plan, KKK members followed. The activists were never heard from again.

The FBI received a tip about a burning station wagon seen in the woods off Highway 21, about 13 miles northeast of Philadelphia, it was the men’s vehicle.

On August 4. acting on an informant tip, the FBI exhumed all three bodies 14 feet below an earthen dam on a local farm.

On December 4 more than a dozen suspects, including Deputy Price and his boss Sheriff Rainey, were indicted and arrested.

On October 20, 1967, following years of court battles, seven of the 18 defendants were found guilty, including Deputy Sheriff Price, but none on murder charges. One major conspirator, Edgar Ray Killen, went free after a lone juror couldn’t bring herself to convict a Baptist preacher. On June 21, 2005, Killen was convicted of manslaughter.
 

FBI Files

 
MIBURN

948 pages of files copied from FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., covering the investigation of the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. Includes correspondence, memorandums, and reports of the investigation of the murders of Michael Henry Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney. The FBI code name for the case was MIBURN (Mississippi Burning).
 

Sam Bowers FBI Files

216 pages of FBI files from the mid 1960's covering Sam Holloway Bowers and the KKK's general activity in Mississippi.

Bowers in response to the civil rights movement co-founded the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and became a Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard. Bowers committed murders of civil rights activists in southern Mississippi: The 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner near Philadelphia, for which he served six years in federal prison; and the 1966 murder of Vernon Dahmer in Hattiesburg, for which he was sentenced to life in prison 32 years after the crime. He died in prison at the age of 82.
 

President Lyndon B. Johnson Secret White House Telephone Calls Audio Recordings

 Four hours and forty-two minutes of secret recordings of LBJ telephone calls related to the murders. President Johnson secretly recorded many of his telephone conversations throughout his administration. Participants in the calls include J. Edgar Hoover, Robert Kennedy, Lee White, James Eastland and others.

 
Additional material Includes:

Department of Justice 2016 Report

A June 2016 report titled, "U.S. Department of Justice Report to the Attorney General of the State of Mississippi Investigation of the 1964 Murders of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman. “         

The DOJ report of their investigation into the June 21, 1964 murders. The investigation and this report were authorized by the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.