Editing Andrew Goodman (activist) (section)

==Murder==
[[File:FBI Poster of Missing Civil Rights Workers.jpg|thumb|left|[[Missing persons]] poster created by the [[FBI]] in 1964, shows the photographs of Andrew Goodman, [[James Chaney]], and [[Michael Schwerner]].]]
{{main|Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner}}

On June 21, their first full day in the state, the trio drove from their home base of [[Meridian, Mississippi|Meridian]] for Philadelphia, a community about an hour from Meridian, to visit the church ruins and meet with church members.<ref name="AGF" /> When they were driving back to Meridian, they were pulled over by [[Neshoba County|Neshoba County, Mississippi]] Deputy Sheriff [[Cecil Price]] (a KKK member), for allegedly driving 65 miles-per-hour in a 30-mile-per-hour speed limit zone. Price arrested the three men and took them to the Neshoba County jail, where Chaney was booked for speeding, while Schwerner and Goodman were booked "for investigation". Chaney was charged a $20 fine and the three men were released before 10:25pm and instructed to leave the county. However, while Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman were in custody, Price contacted local KKK leader and minister [[Edgar Ray Killen]] and informed him of the three activists in custody. According to a subsequent U.S. Department of Justice investigation, Killen then gathered other KKK members and devised a plot to attack the three as they left the jail.<ref name="Frontline" />

Price followed them in his patrol car. At 10:25, Price sped to catch up with the station wagon before it crossed the border into the relative safety of [[Lauderdale County, Mississippi|Lauderdale County]]. Price ordered the three out of their car and into his. He drove them to a deserted area on Rock Cut Road while followed by two cars filled with other Klansmen.<ref name="jurist">{{Cite web|last=Linder |first=Douglas |title=The "Mississippi Burning" Trial (U. S. vs. Price et al.) |work=[[JURIST]] |publisher=JURIST: The Legal Education Network |date=August 2000 |url=http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/trials8.htm |access-date=2013-10-25 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100617150117/http://www.jurist.law.pitt.edu/trials8.htm |archive-date=2010-06-17 }}</ref> Price turned the trio over to the Klansmen who, after beating Chaney, shot and killed Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney. An [[autopsy]] of Goodman, showing fragments of red clay in his lungs and grasped in his fists, suggests he was probably buried alive alongside the already dead Chaney and Schwerner.<ref>{{cite web|title=A Mississippi Freedom Summer Pilgrimage: An Atrocity We Must Never Forget|url=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/marian-wright-edelman/a-mississippi-freedom-sum_b_5622366.html|website=The Huffington Post|date=July 25, 2014|access-date=2015-12-14}}</ref>

The [[Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission]] was strongly opposed to integration and civil rights. It paid spies to identify citizens suspected of activism, especially people from the North and West who entered the state. The records opened by court order in 1998 also revealed the state's deep complicity in the [[murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner]], because its investigator A. L. Hopkins passed on to the Commission information about the workers, including the car license number of a new civil rights worker. Records showed the Commission, in turn, passed the information on to the [[Neshoba County, Mississippi|Neshoba County]] Sheriff, who was implicated in the murders.<ref>{{cite web| url= http://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/bh/badco/missSov.htm  |title=Mississippi Commission's Files a Treasure Trove of Innuendo|author= AP|date=18 March 1998|access-date= 9 May 2008| website=MDCBowen.org}}</ref>

===Investigation and trial===
The murders changed the course of the Civil Rights Movement:

[[Willie Blue]], a surviving participant in the [[Freedom Summer]] movement said: "Goodman's richer than whipped cream. He wasn't supposed to die in Vietnam; he sure wasn't supposed to die in Mississippi. When America's brightest are murdered for doing something fundamentally American, suddenly the world knows about Mississippi. It was another nail in the segregated coffin."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.theroot.com/dispatches-from-freedom-summer-the-ghosts-of-greenwood-1790876410 |title=Dispatches From Freedom Summer: The Ghosts of Greenwood |last=Hannah-Jones |first=Nikole |date=July 12, 2014 |publisher=TheRoot.com |access-date=November 26, 2018 }}</ref> The FBI entered the case after the men disappeared. They helped find them buried in an earthen dam. The US government prosecuted the case under the [[Enforcement Act of 1870]]. The Neshoba County deputy sheriff and six conspirators were convicted by Federal prosecutors of civil rights violations but were not convicted of murder. Two defendants were acquitted because the [[jury deadlocked]].