When it awoke on the last morning of its past, Philadelphia (pop. 5,017) looked much like any other Mississippi hamlet. Rising above a two-story skyline, dozens of short, sharp steeples aimed at the heavens. Smokestacks from three sawmills belched black clouds. Downtown merchants pushed brooms outside the Ben Franklin Five and Dime, the A & P, and the Piggly-Wiggly. Along covered sidewalks, clusters of sun-shriveled old men sat on wooden benches, smoking, spitting, watching their town awaken. Pickups passed as if on parade. A farmer in overalls waved from a tractor. Mothers walked with crew-cut boys in tow. By 9:00 a.m. the sun baked the gravel streets, giving the old men no reason to believe June 23 would be different from any other Tuesday. Some may have seen network reports about the three men said to have disappeared in their county—more “Northern-managed news.” Whatever the problem was, things would soon go back to normal. “Normal” in Philadelphia was as homespun as the upcoming Neshoba County Dairy Princess contest; “normal” was as timeless as the courthouse. With its Corinthian columns and Confederate statue, the brick building was the bedrock of the town some called “the other Philadelphia.” Yet there was still another Philadelphia within this one.
Down a snaking dirt road and across the railroad tracks stood Independence Quarters. There, in tiny homes with boarded-up windows, Philadelphia blacks “scratched it out.” Independence Quarters had its own school, its own churches, its own version of Mississippi. And when word spread that three men were missing in Neshoba County, few in “the quarters” doubted the story. Folks said it must have something to do with the burning of that church. The church that was supposed to host a Freedom School. The church that a young CORE worker had visited a few weeks back.
White Philadelphia had not heard of the church burning. A local bank president had convinced editors to kill the story, and it had not run in a single Mississippi paper. Those few who knew considered it typical—niggers fighting over this or that, burning their own church. That, too, would all blow over. Things always did in Philadelphia, which, having no antebellum mansions, no battlefields or plantations, prided itself on its hospitality and its “fair-minded, Christian people.” Yet that was about to change, starting with the people.
The old men spotted the invaders first. By 10:00 a.m., whichever way they looked, they saw strangers with sunglasses and briefcases, white shirts and skinny ties. Each man drove a dark sedan with a whiplike antenna, and each seemed nervous, scribbling notes, scanning the town square, avoiding eye contact. The old men huddled on benches, sharing fears instilled by grandparents, fears of Yankees, carpetbaggers, and a war that had never really ended. Now the nightmare was starting again. Now, in numbers no one in Mississippi could have imagined, the FBI had invaded Neshoba County.
All Tuesday morning, the FBI set up operations. At the Delphia Courts Motel, a right angle of dilapidated rooms fronting a concrete lot, Room 18 became FBI headquarters. Behind city hall, agents installed a communications center and began erecting an antenna on the wide, squat water tower. After establishing radio contact with Washington, they set out to visit the police, the courthouse, and the jail. The jailer told agents she had fined James Chaney twenty dollars and released the three at 10:30 p.m. Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, a brawny, moon-faced man with an “aw shucks” smile, said he had arrested the men, all right. He had last seen them on Sunday night, heading south on Highway 19 toward Meridian. He had watched their taillights disappear over a hill. Agents were soon driving along the rolling two-lane, stopping to peer into swamps that seemed eerily still. But by noon, swamp waters rippled as FBI helicopters swooped low, flapping laundry on clothes-lines, sending chickens scurrying.
Back in town, as the temperature hit 100, tempers flared. Enraged men, arms waving, mouths like open scars, confronted reporters outside the courthouse. Didn’t they know they were being duped? It was all a hoax! Those three boys just took off! And if agents knew what was good for them, they’d damn sure do likewise. Going house to house, agents met stone walls. No one would talk. No one would even listen. A hoax. Then toward 3:30 p.m., bulletins broke into radio and TV nationwide. The blue Ford had been found, not south of Philadelphia, where Deputy Price said he had watched its taillights vanish, but near the Choctaw Reservation, fifteen miles north of town.
Choctaw Indians fishing in a creek had spotted the smoldering wreckage. The head of the reservation called the FBI, whose agents waded in to find the car, sizzling hot, protruding from a blackberry thicket at the edge of the Bogue Chitto swamp. The car’s interior was as black as an oven. A rear wheel was missing, but the license—H25 503—checked out. Towed from the swamp, its muffler dangling, its windshield blown out, the charred vehicle was hauled into town. Within minutes, word reached the White House.
Lyndon Johnson had learned of the summer project back in April. “They’re sending them in by buses in the hundreds from all over the country to help ’em register,” Johnson told Georgia senator Richard Russell. “And they’re gonna try to get ’em all registered in Mississippi. And there’re gonna be a bunch of killings.” Yet heeding his aide’s advice, the president had ignored all pleas for protection. Johnson had other pressing problems that Tuesday. He had to replace his ambassador to Vietnam, screen vice presidential candidates, and plan the ceremony to sign the Civil Rights Act. But all morning and into the afternoon, Mississippi kept coming up—in his press conference, in phone calls, in bulletins. Johnson was outraged by suggestions that he was not doing enough to find the missing men. “I asked Hoover two weeks ago, after talking to the Attorney General, to fill up Mississippi with FBI men and infiltrate everything he could,” the president said. “I’ve asked him to put more men after these three kids. . . . I’m shoving in as much as I know how.” At 3:00 p.m., Johnson’s archrival Robert Kennedy met with the Goodmans and Nathan Schwerner, but the president did not want to follow suit. “I’m afraid that if I start house mothering each kid that’s gone down there and that doesn’t show up, that we’ll have this White House full of people every day asking for sympathy.” Finally, Johnson asked Nicholas Katzenbach, deputy assistant attorney general, what he thought had happened to the three.
“I think they got picked up by some of these Klan people, would be my guess.”
“And murdered?”
“Yeah, probably. Or else they’re just being hidden on one of those barns or something . . . and having the hell scared out of them. But I would not be surprised if they’d been murdered, Mr. President. Pretty rough characters.” Katzenbach agreed the president should not see the parents. “I think you’d have a problem of every future one. . . . This is not going to be the only time this sort of thing will occur, I’m afraid.” Toward 4:00 p.m., Johnson was on the phone with Senator James Eastland, who was calling from his plantation in Ruleville.
“I don’t believe there’s three missing,” Eastland told LBJ. “I believe it’s a publicity stunt.” No Klan was active in Neshoba County, the senator lied. “There’s no white organizations in that area of Mississippi. Who could possibly harm them? ” The conversation was interrupted by a call from J. Edgar Hoover.
“Mr. President, I wanted to let you know we’ve found the car. . . . Now whether there are any bodies in the car, we won’t know until we can get into the car ourselves . . . but I did want you to know. Apparently what’s happened—these men have been killed.”
“Well now, what would make you think they’ve been killed?” the president asked.
“Because of the fact that it is the same car that they were in in Philadelphia, Mississippi . . . ,” Hoover answered. “This is merely an assumption that probably they were burned in the car. On the other hand, they may have been taken out and killed on the outside.”
“Or maybe kidnapped and locked up.”
“Well, I would doubt whether those people down there would give them even that much of a break.”
Hoover called back an hour later, but the conversation was cut short when Carolyn and Robert Goodman were escorted into the Oval Office. With
them was Nathan Schwerner. Frazzled, red-eyed from lack of sleep, the parents had flown from New York that morning. Hearing the president mention the car, Carolyn Goodman wanted to leap over the huge desk, shouting, “Are they all right?” LBJ hung up, stepped around the desk, and, towering over the slim blond woman, took her hand and broke the news. The “three kids” were still missing, he said. All the powers of the Justice Department and the Department of Defense were being thrown into the search. After twenty minutes, the families left, impressed that the president, as Carolyn Goodman recalled, “changed from a public figure . . . to a human being genuinely concerned about the life of my son.”
That afternoon in Neshoba County, heat melted into thundershowers, curtailing the FBI search, but aftershocks continued to ripple across America. TV bulletins interrupted soap operas and quiz shows: Robert Kennedy was canceling a trip to Poland. The president was sending former CIA director Allen Dulles to Jackson. More FBI agents were on their way. When night fell again, COFO’s WATS line recorded local shock waves. Every report of harassment, every call about a late volunteer, stirred panic. And for the third night in a row, the terror ratcheted up another notch. Shots hit a black minister’s home and a Negro café in Jackson. A firebomb struck a meeting hall on the Gulf Coast. Rumors spread through the coastal town of Moss Point—two black children had eaten poisoned candy thrown from a passing car. One was dead. In the Delta, whites chased reporters out of Ruleville, then drove through “the quarters” hurling bottles and Molotov cocktails.
On Wednesday morning, photos of the charred station wagon jutting from a Mississippi swamp accompanied front-page headlines across the nation: “Burned Car Clue in Hunt for Three Men” (Washington Post), “Dulles Will Direct Rights Trio Hunt” (Los Angeles Times), “Wreckage Raises New Fears over Fate of Missing Men” (New York Times). By noon, marchers were picketing federal buildings in Chicago, New York, and the nation’s capital. At the NAACP national convention in Washington, D.C., members walked out to join the protests. Robert Kennedy went with Myrlie Evers, Medgar’s widow, to shake hands with demonstrators. Back at the epicenter, police with shotguns, automatic weapons, and riot clubs circled the Neshoba County courthouse. All along the street, all through shops and stores, all up and down covered sidewalks, locals seethed with rage and denial.
“They had no business down here.”
“COFO must have burned their own car to make the hoax look convincing. They’re probably far out of the county laughing.”
“This wouldn’t have happened if they had stayed home where they belong.”
“How long do you think we’d last in Harlem? ”
Swarming with reporters, invaded by the FBI, “the other Philadelphia” was just a shot away from a full-blown race war. Shortly after noon, the trigger was cocked when a caravan of cars approached the Neshoba County line.
Fluttering like a mirage as it rolled along Highway 19, the caravan carried black leaders—CORE’s James Farmer; SNCC’s John Lewis; Dick Gregory, just back from the Soviet Union—and teenagers ready to search for bodies. All had been warned about Neshoba County. “Farmer, don’t go over there,” the head of the Mississippi State Police said. “That’s one of the worst redneck areas in the state.” The caravan crossed the county line. Beneath the blazing sun, the cars passed swamps, farms, and Calvary crosses by the pebbled roadside. At the Philadelphia city limits, the cars halted before a scene out of a cheap Western. Like some posse, Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and several men with shotguns stood across the road. Rainey, an enormous, paunchy man in a cowboy hat, with a wad of tobacco bulging his cheek, strode up to the lead car and loomed over it. “Where do you think you’re goin’? ” he asked Farmer.
Like most in Neshoba County, the sheriff mocked the disappearance. The three men were “hid somewhere trying to get a lot of publicity out of it, I figure.” After spitting on the asphalt, Rainey told Farmer he would only meet with four men. The rest would have to wait by the highway. Moments later, Rainey’s patrol car led a lone sedan into town. At the courthouse, the black men walked past glaring white faces, then rode a silent elevator to the sheriff’s office. Inside, a slow ceiling fan kept the temperature just below ninety. The black men bristled, tense and indignant, but Rainey and Deputy Price seemed delighted by the attention, smirking and joking while county attorneys handled all questions.
Farmer demanded to visit the burned-out Mt. Zion Church. He was told he would need a search warrant. John Lewis insisted on seeing the burned Ford wagon. He was refused, lest he “destroy evidence.” So there had been a crime, Lewis countered. “If there has been a crime,” the lawyer said with a smile. “Those boys may have decided to go up north or someplace and have a short vacation. They’ll probably be coming back shortly.” Farmer mentioned his young volunteers, ready to search. Heads shook. Private property. Water moccasins. Trespassing. “We don’t want anything to happen to you down here.” After several brittle minutes, the black men were escorted outside, past the shotguns and sour faces, to the cars waiting at city limits. All were certain the smug sheriff and his smiling deputy knew exactly what had happened to the missing men.
Back in Meridian, as thunder rattled rooftops, a mass meeting crackled with anger. Dick Gregory offered $25,000—just arranged in a call to Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner—to anyone finding the missing men and those responsible. That evening, rain clouds parted to reveal an eclipsing moon. In small towns across the state, “redneck boys” roared through “Niggertowns,” shouting, throwing bottles, daring anyone to mess with Mississippi.
Someone had miscalculated. Someone had not recognized how times had changed. Time was when a murder in Mississippi had stayed in Mississippi, when few even heard about the crime, when the rest of America went about its business, distanced by culture and geography. But that time had passed. It was 1964, and when three men disappeared in the most remote corner of the South’s most rural state, the whole nation heard the news the next day. Whoever knew the whereabouts of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney must have been surprised to see what an old-fashioned Mississippi lynching—if that’s what it had been—had unleashed. Because never had a disappearance in the Deep South sent such tremors through the nation. The alarm also paid unwelcome tribute to the planners of Freedom Summer. Their cynicism had been dead on. All the blacks murdered in Mississippi since Emmett Till had scarcely raised concerns beyond state borders. The killing of Herbert Lee had been reported in just one major newspaper; the murder of Louis Allen was found only on back pages. But when whites were killed . . . “It’s a shame that national concern is aroused only after two white boys are missing,” John Lewis told the press. SNCCs had expected as much, but someone in Mississippi had not.
By Thursday, even the president of the United States was counting the days. “I imagine they’re in that lake,” Johnson told an aide that afternoon. “It’s my guess. Three days now.” The rest of the nation watched and waited. The concern was for more than just three men. Murder had always marred America’s self-image, but it had been an especially disfiguring year. The previous twelve months had seen Medgar Evers gunned down in his driveway, four little girls killed in a Birmingham church, the assassination in Dallas, and the televised murder of the alleged assassin. A strangler was on the loose in Boston, throttling innocent women. In New York that spring, Kitty Genovese had been murdered in full view of dozens of neighbors, who had not even called the police. Now came this news from Mississippi. What was America becoming? “We are basically a law abiding nation,” President Johnson reminded Americans that week. But so long as three men were missing in Mississippi, the jury was still out.
Although the FBI had begun to move, although two hundred sailors from the Meridian Naval Air Station were preparing to join the search, SNCC had little faith in any federal investigation. “We need the FBI before the fact,” Bob Moses said. “We have them now after the fact.” SNCC had to conduct its own search. Shortly after the news reached Ohio, two cars left the leafy campus. T
aking different routes lest both be halted by police, the drivers planned to rendezvous that Tuesday afternoon in Meridian. Crossing into Mississippi, each team phoned in on schedule. “No word yet.” One car was delayed outside Holly Springs by ATAC students lecturing about the Tenth Amendment. Still, it arrived on time. The other was . . . missing. More panic swept through the Meridian office, panic that continued all night and into Wednesday morning. When Stokely Carmichael and Charlie Cobb finally showed up, they told of another near miss. Their old Buick had broken down in Durant, a town “knowed for mean.” Cops had not bought their cover—that they were schoolteachers headed for a Florida vacation. Carmichael was held overnight, but Cobb was told—at 10:00 p.m.—that he could go free. He refused, was thrown out of jail, and spent a terrifying night in the car, clutching a tire iron and “praying for sunrise.” The following morning, Cobb bailed out Carmichael and they drove to Meridian, ready to search.
Toward dusk on the third day after the disappearance, SNCC’s search team snuck into Neshoba County. Making their way along back roads, they visited the ashes of the Mt. Zion Church, then found refuge in a shack filled with rifles. Over a dinner of collards and ham hocks, they heard what local blacks thought had happened. The three had surely been killed by “those same peckerwoods” who burned the church. “Ain’t no telling where they done hid the bodies.” The men waited until midnight, then set out for the swamps. Their hosts drove them as James Chaney would have, headlights out, slamming over rutted roads, clambering deeper into Klan territory, where a wrong turn would have meant a flogging or another disappearance. Piling out of pickups, they spread out into swamps and creeks, searched barns and wells, used long sticks to probe muddy ditches. The muggy night seemed alive with fear. Any moment they expected to hear the thud of stick against a shoulder or torso, but all they heard were snakes hissing, mosquitoes whining, and deerflies buzzing their ears. They trudged on, ankle deep, knee deep, waist deep. Vines snagged their clothes; brambles slashed their arms. The teams searched until the sky turned salmon pink, returned to cabins to sweat more than sleep, then searched again the following midnight, tracking down the latest rumors. “So and so said they saw something. . . . We heard tell. . . . So and so heard the white people talking about . . .” Finally, rumors said the Klan had learned of their presence, and the midnight searches were called off.
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