Before 'Freedom Summer,' A Wave Of Violence Largely Forgotten : Code Switch : NPR

Before 'Freedom Summer,' A Wave Of Violence Largely Forgotten : Code Switch : NPR: This summer we commemorate the Freedom Summer participants who faced death — and in some cases were murdered — for trying to transform the racial landscape of America. This week marks the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the bodies belonging to James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, three civil rights workers who were brutally killed while trying to register blacks to vote in Mississippi. Their disappearance had drawn the national news media and federal investigators to Neshoba County, Miss.

That lethal terror was not reserved for civil rights activists alone: Groups like the Ku Klux Klan exacted violence against black people who they thought were acting above their station.