Neshoba County is a county located in the central part of the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2020 census,the population was 29,087. Its county seat is Philadelphia.
Andrew Goodman was an American civil rights activist. He was one of three Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) workers murdered in Philadelphia,Mississippi,by members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1964. Goodman and two fellow activists,James Chaney and Michael Schwerner,were volunteers for the Freedom Summer campaign that sought to register African-Americans to vote in Mississippi and to set up Freedom Schools for black Southerners.
Philadelphia is a city in and the county seat of Neshoba County,Mississippi,United States. The population was 7,118 at the 2020 census.
Michael Henry Schwerner was an American civil rights activist. He was one of three Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) field workers murdered in rural Neshoba County,Mississippi,by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Schwerner and two co-workers,James Chaney and Andrew Goodman,were killed in response to their civil rights work,which included promoting voting registration among African Americans,most of whom had been disenfranchised in the state since 1890.
James Earl Chaney was an American civil rights activist. He was one of three Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) civil rights workers murdered in Philadelphia,Mississippi,by members of the Ku Klux Klan on June 21,1964. The others were Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner from New York City.
Edgar Ray Killen was an American Ku Klux Klan organizer who planned and directed the murders of James Chaney,Andrew Goodman,and Michael Schwerner,three civil rights activists participating in the Freedom Summer of 1964. He was found guilty in state court of three counts of manslaughter on June 21,2005,the forty-first anniversary of the crime,and sentenced to 60 years in prison. He appealed the verdict,but the sentence was upheld on April 12,2007,by the Supreme Court of Mississippi. He died in prison on January 11,2018,at age 93.
On June 21,1964,three Civil Rights Movement activists,James Chaney,Andrew Goodman,and Michael Schwerner,were murdered by local members of the Ku Klux Klan. They had been arrested earlier in the day for speeding,and after being released were followed by local law enforcement &others,all affiliated with the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. After following the three for some time,they were abducted by the group,brought to a secluded location,and shot. They were then buried in an earthen dam. All three were associated with the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) and its member organization,the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). They had been working with the Freedom Summer campaign by attempting to register African Americans in Mississippi to vote. Since 1890 and through the turn of the century,Southern states had systematically disenfranchised most black voters by discrimination in voter registration and voting.
United States v. Cecil Price,et al.,also known as the Mississippi Burning trial or Mississippi Burning case,was a criminal trial where the United States charged a group of 18 men with conspiring in a Ku Klux Klan plot to murder three young civil rights workers in Philadelphia,Mississippi on June 21,1964 during Freedom Summer. The trial,conducted in Meridian,Mississippi with U.S. District Court Judge W. Harold Cox presiding,resulted in convictions of 7 of the 18 defendants. Another defendant,James Edward Jordan,pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution.
Lawrence Andrew Rainey Sr. was an American police officer and white supremacist who served as Sheriff of Neshoba County,Mississippi,from 1963 to 1968. He gained notoriety for his alleged involvement in the June 1964 murders of civil rights activists James Chaney,Andrew Goodman,and Michael Schwerner. He was accused of aiding and abetting members of the Ku Klux Klan in the murders by having his officers keep watch over the men's position in town. Rainey was a member of Mississippi's White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and had previously gone to court for the shooting of an unarmed black motorist in 1959.
Alton Wayne Roberts was an American murderer and white supremacist. Roberts,a member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,was convicted for his role in the 1964 Freedom Summer murders. He was the one who fatally shot two of the victims,Congress of Racial Equality civil rights activists Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. Roberts also shot the third activist,James Chaney,but some debate that it was another accomplice,James Jordan,who had killed him. Jordan had identified Roberts as Chaney's killer. In 1967,he was charged and convicted of depriving the slain activists of their civil rights.
Cecil Ray Price was an American police officer and white supremacist. He was a participant in the murders of Chaney,Goodman,and Schwerner in 1964. At the time of the murders,Price was 26 years old and a deputy sheriff in Neshoba County,Mississippi. He was a member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Florence Mars was an American civil rights activist and author best known for her book Witness in Philadelphia about the murder of three civil rights activists in Mississippi.
The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) organization which is active in the United States. It originated in Mississippi and Louisiana in the early 1960s under the leadership of Samuel Bowers,its first Imperial Wizard. The White Knights of Mississippi were formed in December 1963,when they separated from the Original Knights of Mississippi after the resignation of Imperial Wizard Roy Davis. Roughly 200 members of the Original Knights of Louisiana also joined the White Knights. Within a year,their membership was up to around six thousand,and they had Klaverns in over half of the counties in Mississippi. By 1967,the number of active members had declined to around four hundred. Similar to the United Klans of America (UKA),the White Knights are very secretive about their group.
Charles Delbert Hosemann Jr. is an American politician and attorney who has been the lieutenant governor of Mississippi since January 2020. From 2008 to 2020,he served as the secretary of state of Mississippi.
Carolyn Elizabeth Goodman was an American clinical psychologist who became a prominent civil rights advocate after her son,Andrew Goodman and two other civil rights workers,James Chaney and Michael Schwerner,were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in Neshoba County,Mississippi,in 1964.
James Snowden was an American truck driver and white supremacist. He was arrested as a co-conspirator in the 1964 murders of James Chaney,Andrew Goodman,and Michael Schwerner in Philadelphia,Mississippi,for transporting the kidnapped activists to a remote location to be killed. He was a member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He was sentenced in 1967 by federal district judge William Cox to three years for depriving the murdered men of their civil rights.
James W. Kitchens is an American jurist who served as a justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi for the Central District from 2009 to 2025. He served as one of two presiding justices,from 2017 to 2025. A graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Mississippi School of Law,Kitchens was elected the district attorney for Mississippi's 14th Judicial District three times from 1971 to 1982,representing Copiah,Lincoln,Pike,and Walthall counties. During his tenure as district attorney,he survived an assassination attempt that resulted in wounds to his hand and leg.
Olen Lavelle Burrage was a Mississippi farmer and businessman who was tried and acquitted of the June 1964 murders of three civil rights workers. Burrage owned the farm where the bodies of James Chaney,Andrew Goodman,and Michael Schwerner were found buried in an earthen dam.
Herman Tucker was an American truck driver and heavy equipment operator from Neshoba County,Mississippi who was implicated in the murder of three civil rights workers in June 1964. Prosecutors alleged that Turner used a bulldozer to bury the bodies of James Chaney,Andrew Goodman,and Michael Schwerner in an earthen dam on Olen Burrage's farm. A jury acquitted Tucker in 1967.
Johnnie Max Kilpatrick was an American judge and politician. He served as judge to the 6th district of the Mississippi Chancery Court from 2005 until his retirement in 2010. Previously,Kilpatrick was a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1972 until 1980.
