Since the end of the Civil War and into the 1960’s, Southern states, including Mississippi, defied the Federal Government’s directions regarding racial integration and civil rights for blacks. As the summer of 1964 approached, known as the Freedom Summer, college students were recruited to aid local activists, who were involved in grassroots community organizing, and voter registration education and drives in the state.
Michael Schwerner, 24, James Cheney, 21 and Andrew Goodman, 20
On Memorial Day, May 25, 1964, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, working for the Congress of Federated Organizations (COFO), a civil rights group of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), spoke to the congregation at Mount Zion Methodist Church in Longdale, Mississippi about voting rights for blacks and to set-up a Freedom School to prepare disenfranchised black citizens to pass the comprehension and literacy tests required by the state.
During the evening of Tuesday, June 16, members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan went to the church, looking for Michael Schwerner. Unable to find him, they beat the African-American parishioners whom they encountered, and returned later to burn down the church. On Sunday, June 21, Schwerner and Chaney were joined by Andrew Goodman, and drove a 1963 blue Ford Fairlane from the COFO office in Meridian, Mississippi to Longdale to investigate the aftermath of the fire and interview witnessess.
| 3:00 pm | Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff and Klan member Cecil Ray Price pulls over the three men. Recognizing Schwerner and the car belonging to COFO, they Price arrests and holds them in the Philadelphia, Mississippi jail. Chaney is booked for speeding, and Schwerner and Goodman are held in connection with the church arson. Shortly thereafter, Price contacts Edgar Ray Killen, a Philadelphia minister and Klan leader, and tells him that the three civil rights volunteers were in custody. |
| 6:00 pm | Killen meets with other Klan members at the Longhorn Restaurant in Meridian, and then at Akin’s Mobile Homes property to plan the abduction of the three men when they are released from jail. |
| 10:30 pm |
James Chaney pays a $20 fine and all three men are released from the jail. They immediately drive from Philadelphia south on Highway 19 toward Meridian. Price, driving his official patrol car, joins the two carloads of Klansmen at the outskirts of Philadelphia, and they all speed after and catch the station wagon. The three men are put into Price’s patrol car, and driven to an isolated location on a dirt road just off Highway 19. They are quickly shot and killed alongside Rock Cut Road and their bodies are loaded into their own station wagon. |
| The three bodies are buried by a bulldozer at the Old Jolly Farm, owned by Klansman Olen Lovell Burrage in an earthen dam then under construction at the farm. | |
| 1:00 am | Between 1:00 and 1:30 in the morning on June 22, the station wagon is set on fire near in a swampy area alongside Highway 21. |
Lift Every Voice retraces the locations of the 1964 voting rights movement tragedy in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
6 text sheets on Canson Rag Photographique
4 archival pigment prints on Mylar
Summary statement, map and colophon on Canson Rag Photographique
Chiyogami silkscreened paper covered book binders board with four-flap archival folder