Radio Rootz' This Day in History

• produced by Jackie Kook
• in

The bodies of American Civil Rights activists James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were found in the Mississippi River after disappearing two months earlier.  The three young activists had traveled together to Mississippi to register black voters and investigate the bombing of a black church.  After being arrested for supposed speeding, they were rleeased onto a dark remote road and greeted by carloads of Ku Klux Klan members.  The Klansmen shot the two Jewish New Yorkers, Schwerner and Goodman.  Chaney, a black Mississippi native, was brutally beaten with chains and mutilated before being shot.  The killings received massive media attention, and ignited public sympathy.  Civil Rights activists criticized the publicity, stating that had two o