You’ve struck a blow for the White Man. Mississippi can be proud of you [for
killing] those three sons of bitches tonight.’
As SNCC calculated, a national outcry ensued after the charred car was
located in a swamp, and president Johnson called for a massive manhunt. A
benumbed Rita Schwerner explained why a manhunt was ordered: ‘We all
know that this search with two hundred sailors is because Andrew Goodman
and my husband are white. If only Chaney was involved, nothing would’ve
been done.’ To crack the case code-named ‘Mississippi Burning,’ 258 FBI
agents dragged fifty miles of the snake-infested Pearl river, interviewed a
thousand people, and compiled a 150,000-page file. The decomposed
bodies turned up six weeks later when the FBI offered a $30,000 reward.
Nineteen men were implicated, but none stood trial for murder because the
state refused to prosecute. Eventually, deputy sheriff Price and six others
were convicted of the lesser charge of violating the victims’ federal civil
rights. It was the first time a Mississippi jury convicted klansmen in connec-
tion with the death of a black person. To monitor future terrorist activity as
part of its counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO), the FBI infiltrated
all fourteen Klan groups with 2,000 spies.
Despite this dreadful beginning, idealistic volunteers streamed into
Mississippi expecting to turn the closed society inside out. Adept at organ-
izational tasks because they were campus leaders, white students wrote press
releases, transferred money, answered telephones, and cranked mimeograph
machines. At countless meetings, their consciousness was raised, leading
them to walk picket lines, teach school, and knock on doors to take blacks
to the registrar [Doc. 14, p. 152]. Overall, Freedom Summer proved to be
an eye-popping experience for the volunteers, who risked their lives for oth-
ers and survived by sleeping on bare mattresses and eating beans, peas, and
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Neil McCarthy described his time in
Mississippi as ‘the most frightening and rewarding thing I’ve done in my life... the richest part [of the experience] was the bond you felt with everyone
in the project. We were really a family’ [Doc. 15, p. 152]. Another volunteer
admitted that ‘Mississippi transformed us more than we transformed
Mississippi – much more profoundly.’ By sharing meals and their homes with
the volunteers, local blacks learned, as Fannie Lou Hamer concluded, that
‘white folks are human.’
In wartime conditions, tensions inevitably arose. Inexperienced white stu-
dents resented how blacks sometimes ‘treated us as brusquely as sergeants
treat buck privates during the first month of basic training.’ Frustration, even
bitterness, mounted as whites discovered that most local blacks were more
interested in self-preservation than in voting. Blacks resented the Ivy League
students for their middle-class background, superior education, and conde-
scending attitudes. Blacks also questioned the commitment of these sunshine
108 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT