On this day: Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman killed

On 21st June 1964, Mr Schwerner and Mr Goodman, along with fellow activist James Chaney, went to Longdale to visit Mt. Zion Methodist Church – a building that had been fire-bombed by the Klu Klux Klan.

On their way home, the three men were arrested by Deputy Sherriff Cecil Price for an alleged traffic violation and taken to Neshoba County Jail.

They were released that evening and on their way home, they were stopped by two carloads of KKK members on a remote rural road.

The men approached their car and shot the three men.

Their bodies were not discovered until early August.2011.

What the JC said:About 2,200 people attended the funeral in New York on Sunday of Andrew Goodman, the 20-year-old Jewish student from Queens College whose body was found in a shallow grave in Mississippi State last week. With Michael Schwerner, 24, another Jew, and James Chanry, a Negro, Goodman took part in A Summer Campaign by college students to register Negro voters in Mississippi. He bodies of the tree men, who have been missing since June 21, were found by agents of the FBI in shallow graves.

See more from the JC archives here