ssissippi Burning Trial(U. S. vs. Price et al.)by Douglas O. LinderIt was an old-fashioned lynching, carried out with the help of county officials, that came to symbolize hardcore resistance to integration. Dead werethree civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney. All three shot in the dark of night on a lonely road in Neshoba County,Mississippi. Many people predicted such a tragedy when the Mississippi Summer Project, an effort that would bring hundreds of college-age volunteers to the most totalitarian state in the country was announced in April, 1964. The FBIsall-out search for the conspirators who killed the three young men, depicted inthe movie Mississippi Burning, was successful, leading three years later to atrial in the courtroom of one of Americas most determined segregationist judges.Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Klu Klux Klan of Mississippi, sent word in May, 1964 to the Klansmen of Lauderdale and Neshoba counties that it was time to activate Plan 4. Plan 4 provided for the elimination of the despised civil rights activist Michael Schwerner, who the Klan called Goatee or Jew-Boy. Schwerner, the first white civil rights worker based outside of the capitol of Jackson, had earned the enmity of the Klan by organizing a black boycott of a white-owned business and aggressively trying to register blacks in and around Meridian to vote.The Klans first attempt to eliminate Schwerner came on June 16, 1964 in the rural Neshoba County community of Longdale LINK TO MAP. Schwerner had visited Longdale on Memorial Day to ask permission of the black congregation atMount Zion Church to use their church as the site of a Freedom School. The Klan knew of Schwerners Memorial Day visit to Longdale and expected him to return for a business meeting held at the church on the evening of June 16. About 10 p.m., when the Mount Zion meeting broke up, seven black men and three black women left the building to discover thirty men lined up in military fashion with rifles and shotguns. More men were gathered at the rear of the church. Frustrated when their search for Jew-Boy was unsuccessful, some of the Klan members began beating the departing blacks. Ten gallons of gasoline were removed from one of the Klan members cars and spread around the inside of the church. Mount Zion Church was soon engulfed in flames.News of the beatings and fire reached Michael Schwerner in Oxford, Ohio. Schwerner and his twenty-one-year-old chief aide , a native black Meridian named James Chaney, were in Ohio to attend a three-day program sponsored by theNational Council of Churches to train recruits for the Mississippi Summer Project. Among those being trained for a summer of work aimed at improving the lives of black Mississippians was a Queens College student named Andrew Goodman, who Schwerner convinced to come to Meridian. Anxious to get back to Mississippi to learn what they could about the disturbing events in Longdale, Schwerner, Chaney, and the newly-recruited Goodman loaded into a blue CORE-owned Ford station wagon in the early morning hours of June 20 for long trip back to Meridian. The next day, after a short nights sleep and a breakfast in Meridian, the three civil rights workers were again in the CORE wagon heading northwest towards Longdale.Longdale was in Neshoba County, known as a high risk area for civil rights workers. Lawrence Rainey, Neshoba County Sheriff, and his deputy, Cecil Price, were both members of the Klan. Although their Klan membership was not generallyknown, both had reputations as being tough on blacks. Rainey had been elected sheriff the previous November after campaigning as the man who can cope with situations that might arise. In Neshoba County, it was well understood that the situations Rainey referred to meant meddlesome interference by outsiders with Mississippis state-enforced policy of segregation. Schwerner told Meridian CORE worker Sue Brown that they should be back in the CORE office in Meridian by 4:00. If they werent back by 4:30, she should start making phone calls.Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman began their Midsummers Day visit to NeshobaCounty with an inspection of the burned out remains of Mount Zion Church. They then visited the homes of four black members of the congregation to learn more about the incident. At one of the homes, the three civil rights workers were warned that a group of white men were looking for them. About 3 p.m., the trio was ready to head back to the relative safety of their Meridian office. There were two possible routes to Meridian. The most direct route was the road they had come up, Highway 491, a narrow clay road intersected by numerous dirt roads. An ambush would be easy on 491. The other, less direct route, was a black topped Highway 16, which would take them west through Philadelphia, the county seat. Chaney turned onto Highway 16.Deputy Sheriff Price was at that time heading