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By Root 1757 0

there was no evidence the men had been beaten—arguments erupted over the bodies. Distrusting Mississippi doctors, the Schwerners sent their own physician to perform autopsies. Dr. David Spain found single bullets lodged in Goodman’s spine and Schwerner’s left lung. Powder burns proved both had been shot point-blank. Then, examining Chaney’s body, the doctor stirred a controversy that has yet to settle. Contrary to initial reports, he announced, Chaney had been horribly beaten. Shot three times, he had several broken bones, one shoulder “reduced to a pulp,” his skull caved in. “In my extensive experience of twenty-five years as a pathologist and as a medical examiner,” the doctor announced, “I have never witnessed bones so severely shattered, except in tremendously high speed accidents such as airplane crashes.” (Chaney’s beating was frequently cited as further proof of savagery. Later evidence suggested he had been run over by the bulldozer burying him, but autopsy photos revealed in 2000 showed that Chaney was severely beaten before being shot.)

When LBJ spoke at his Texas ranch, predicting “substantive results” in the Neshoba murder case, reporters flocked to Philadelphia, expecting arrests. They found the town swarming with activity. The Neshoba County Fair was just days away, and the fairgrounds, two miles south of where the bodies were found, were humming. The fair was “Mississippi’s Giant House Party,” drawing thousands eager to while away long, story-filled nights in wooden cabins of picture-perfect nostalgia, with creaking porches and rocking chairs. Philadelphia lived for its famous fair, and nothing, not even the stench of death, would dampen it. Reporters asking questions about bodies and burials had to settle for answers about the “giant house party.” But behind closed doors, many in Philadelphia were asking the same question. After a six-week intensive search, how had the bodies suddenly turned up? Some said the dam, built in May but still holding no water, attracted suspicion. Others noted Dick Gregory’s informant letter, which the FBI publicly discounted. Those still enraged by the bureau’s invasion insisted agents had planted bodies beneath the dam. As talk of a payoff spread, suspicion focused on anyone displaying sudden status—a new car, a barbecue, a hunting rifle. Whoever the informant was, many said, they would “hate to be in his shoes” if his name was discovered. (The name of the informant Mr. X—agent Joseph Sullivan’s chummy highway patrolman from Meridian—would not be revealed until 2005. Speculation on which Klansman revealed the burial site to Mr. X remains rampant.)

At the dam site, state troopers kept sightseers away while FBI agents sifted dirt and scoured approach roads for clues. They found none. Olen Burrage, owner of the site, denied suspicions. “I want people to know I’m sorry it happened,” the burly businessman said. “I just don’t know why anybody would kill them, and I don’t believe in anything like that.” The bodies that had lain together throughout Freedom Summer were soon separated. Rita Schwerner hoped her husband could rest in the earth with his friend, but no mortician in Mississippi would touch an integrated burial. James Chaney was to be buried on a hilltop outside Meridian. The bodies of Mickey Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were flown to New York.

The movement in Mississippi changed that weekend. SNCC’s faith that “courage displaces fear [and] love transforms hate” suddenly seemed insulting. Many would continue to march, unarmed and singing, into the billy clubs, into the black buses taking them to jail. But countless members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee would no longer speak of nonviolence. Those who did would encounter disdain. “Y’all can be non-violent,” one Delta man said, “but I ain’t going to let them folks come up here and shoot and not have nothing to shoot back with.” Black Greenwood, on edge all summer, was boiling over. Blacks were boycotting a store owned by the cop who dragged the pregnant woman on Freedom Day. Outside the store, police patrolled