Username This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. Choose wisely! Email Your e-mail address will be used to confirm your account. We won t share it with anyone else. Password Create a password that only you will remember. If you forget it, you ll be able to recover it using your email address. Confirm Password
The records include case files, Federal Bureau of Investigation memoranda, research notes and federal informant reports and witness testimonies. There are also photographs of the exhumation of the victims’ bodies and subsequent autopsies, along with aerial photographs of the burial site, according to an announcement from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
The collection is being stored in three catalog records: Series 2870 houses the attorney general’s research files, Series 2902 houses the FBI memos and Series 2903 houses the photographs.
The three Freedom Summer workers, all in their 20s, had been investigating the burning of a black church near Philadelphia, Mississippi, when they disappeared in June of 1964.
Case Files From 1964 US Civil Rights Worker Killings Made Public
Voice of America
28 Jun 2021, 08:35 GMT+10
JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI - Never before seen case files, photographs and other records documenting the investigation into the slayings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi are now open to the public for the first time, 57 years after their deaths.
The 1964 killings of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Neshoba County sparked national outrage and helped spur passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They later became the subject of the movie Mississippi Burning.
The previously sealed materials - dating from 1964 to 2007 - were transferred to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History from the Mississippi attorney general s office in 2019. As of last week, they are now available for viewing by the public at William F. Winter Archives and History Building in Jackson.
The records include case files, Federal Bureau of Investigation memoranda, research notes and federal informant reports and witness testimonies. There are also photographs of the exhumation of the victims’ bodies and subsequent autopsies, along with aerial photographs of the burial site, according to an announcement from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
The collection is being stored in three catalog records: Series 2870 houses the attorney general’s research files, Series 2902 houses the FBI memos and Series 2903 houses the photographs.
The three Freedom Summer workers, all in their 20s, had been investigating the burning of a black church near Philadelphia, Mississippi, when they disappeared in June of 1964.
Kathy Michaels - Editor
FILE - On June 29, 1964, the FBI began distributing these pictures of civil rights workers, from left, Michael Schwerner, 24, of New York, James Cheney, 21, from Mississippi, and Andrew Goodman, 20, of New York, who disappeared near Philadelphia, Miss., June 21, 1964. Never before seen case files, photographs and other records documenting the investigation into the infamous slayings of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi are now open to the public announced on Monday, June 21, 2021, for the first time, 57 years after their deaths. The 1964 killings of civil rights activists Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in Neshoba County sparked national outrage and helped spur passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.