Civil rights workers Mickey Schwerner , James Chaney , and Andrew Goodman went missing in Mississippi on June 21 , 1964 , during the Freedom Summer efforts to register African American voters . Eastland tried to convince President Lyndon Johnson that the incident was a hoax and there was no Ku Klux Klan in the state . He suggested that the three had gone to Chicago : Johnson once said : Eastland , like most of his southern colleagues , opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 , which prohibited segregation of public places and facilities . Its passage caused many Mississippi Democrats to support Barry Goldwater 's presidential bid that year , but Eastland did not publicly oppose the election of Johnson . Four years earlier he had quietly supported John F. Kennedy 's presidential campaign , but Mississippi voted that year for unpledged electors . Although Republican Senator Goldwater was strongly defeated by incumbent Johnson , he carried Mississippi with 87.14 percent of the popular vote , which constitutes the best-ever Republican showing in any state since the founding of that party . In 1964 almost all blacks in Mississippi remained excluded from voting , thus Goldwater 's mammoth win essentially constituted the vote of the white population
went missing
Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner
James Eastland