In the 1960s the Civil Rights Movement attracted students to the South from all over the country to work on voter registration and integration . The intervention of people from outside the communities and threat of social change aroused fear and resentment among many whites . In June 1964 , three civil rights workers disappeared in Neshoba County , Mississippi . They had been investigating the arson of a black church being used as a " Freedom School " . Six weeks later , their bodies were found in a partially constructed dam near Philadelphia , Mississippi . James Chaney of Meridian , Mississippi , and Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman of New York City had been members of the Congress of Racial Equality . They had been dedicated to non-violent direct action against racial discrimination . The investigation also unearthed the bodies of numerous anonymous victims of past lynchings and murders
three civil rights workers
Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner
Lynching in the United States