Phone Calls on Murdered Civil Rights Workers

C-SPAN.org's weekly podcast highlighted phone calls of President Lyndon B. Johnson and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on the murdered Civil Rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Beginning on July 212, 1964 Hoover calls Johnson to confirm that the civil rights worker's cars were found, burning about 8 miles NE of Philadelphia, MI. Hoover, although unable to see if there were bodies in the car, believed the men to be dead in the car or were taken and killed in another location saying, "I would doubt that the people down there would give them a break."

On June 23, 1964 two bodies were found. The first body was identified as Charles Edward Moore, who attended college at a nearby school. The second body was unidentified because they only found the lower half of the body. The two bodies found had no connection to the three missing civil rights workers.

On August 5th, Lyndon called Hoover to congratulate him on the closing of the case. The men, Michael Schwerner,  James Chaney, and  Andrew Goodman were found dead not far from the location of the car. Chaney was shot 3 times while the two other men were shot once. The sheriff, deputy sheriff, Justice of the Peace and seven other Ku Klux Klan members were believed to be involved and Hoover hoped that at least one out of the ten would break and they would have enough evidence to prosecute. 

Meg Singer