Missing: Call FBI

Your Mirror: Portraits from the ICP Collection
Section: Identification
Andrew Goodman (1943–1964), James Earl Chaney (1943–1964), and Michael Henry Schwerner (1939–1964) were part of a group of activists encouraging African Americans to register to vote in Mississippi during the summer of 1964. They were pulled over by the
police for speeding and spent a few hours in jail on June 21. Once released, they were followed by police and local Klansmen, abducted, and shot at close range. The activists’ burned-out car was found three days later, and the FBI initially treated the case as a
kidnapping. The bodies were found in early August. In 1967 members of the local police department and Ku Klux Klan were charged with the murder, but none served more than six years. In 2005 eighty-year-old Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of three counts of
manslaughter and sentenced to three consecutive terms of twenty years.