Mississippi Summer received national attention when three civil rights workers involved in the project - James Chaney , Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner - were murdered after having been released from police custody . Their bodies were eventually found after a reluctant J. Edgar Hoover directed the FBI to search for them . Johnson only sent the FBI after series of pressure and demonstrations . He favored at first to be the leader outside of his country with the Vietnam War whereas there were many conflicts inside of it . In the process , the FBI also found corpses of several other missing black Mississippians , whose disappearances had not attracted public attention outside the Delta
murdered
Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee