Today’s blog was written by Damon Turner, summer intern at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland and doctoral student at Morgan State University
Freedom Summer or the Mississippi Summer Project was a time of great intrigue and courage. Black and White Americans who witnessed the horrors of Jim Crow, attempted to change America for the better. Freedom Summer is primarily recognized by three key events: the creation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP); the establishment of Freedom Schools along with the registration of Black voters; and the brutal murder of three civil rights workers.
After local and state authorities failed to locate the men, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy stepped in, along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to take over the case. Kennedy ordered an investigation under the Lindbergh Law [Federal Kidnapping Act (1948)] to look for the three civil rights workers. The investigation was given the code name MIBURN or Mississippi Burning. Ironically, this incident provided the final impetus for President Lyndon B. Johnson to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the mist of searching for the three workers, the FBI discovered the bodies of other missing civil rights activists. Two of the recovered bodies were of Henry Dee and Charles Moore. Many of the DOJ’s investigations into civil rights violations are detailed in RG 60 Class 144 (Civil Rights) Litigation Case Files, 1936-1997 (National Archives Identifier 603432) series. The case file number for the three missing civil rights workers is 144-41-686. These records must be screened prior to public use.
The FBI arrested twenty-one local police officers and Klansmen for the crime. But, state officials refused to prosecute them for kidnapping and murder. Instead, the Federal Government charged seven out of the twenty-one Mississippians for the crime of violating the civil rights of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. It was not until 2005, when eighty year-old former Klansman Edgar Ray Killen was indicted and convicted of manslaughter for masterminding the murder of the three civil rights workers. He was sentenced to sixty years in the Mississippi State Penitentiary. The RG 21 US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi (Meridian) records are held at the National Archives at Atlanta, Georgia. Included in this series is USA v. Cecil Ray Price, et al (1967) Case No. 5291, which details the charges against eighteen Klansmen in the murders of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney.