Mississippi Burning:

A Day in the Life of LBJ

	James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman, 1964
	June 16, 1964 Beatings at Mt. Zion Methodist Church, followed by church burning.
	June 21, 1964 ~5:30 p.m. [EDT, two hours ahead of Miss.'s CST] Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman arrested for speeding. ~Midnight [EDT] Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman paid bond and left jail.
	June 22, 1964 ~12:30 a.m. [EDT] Stopped by Deputy Cecil Price. Taken to Rock Cut Road. Shot and killed. Then buried at Olen Burrage's farm pond dam. COFO record of contact with federal officials, pdf. 6:24 p.m. [EDT] President Johnson and House Minority Leader Charlie Halleck, June 22, 1964 [flash]
	June 23, 1964
	12:35 p.m. [EDT] "They've just disappeared from the face of the earth," Lee White and LBJ. [transcript] 3:35 p.m. "I would not be surprised if they'd been murdered, Mr. President." Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and LBJ. [transcript] 3:59 p.m. "Jim, we got three kids missing down there." LBJ and Mississippi Senator James O. Eastland [flash]. 4:05 p.m. "These men have been killed." J. Edgar Hoover and LBJ. [transcript] 4:25 p.m. "They've got to do something to attract attention." Senator Eastland and LBJ. [transcript] 5:35 p.m. "Same car, same make, same license number, same color and everything?" Hoover and LBJ on the burned car. Parents enter Oval Office. [transcript] 5:44 p.m. "We have helicopters," Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and LBJ. [transcript] 7:15 p.m. "No bones could be found," FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and LBJ. [transcript] 8:35 p.m. "Are you the mother?" LBJ and Mrs. Anne Schwerner, mother of Mickey Schwerner [flash]. 8:50 p.m. "We don't know where we'll go from there," LBJ and Robert Goodman, father of Andrew Goodman [transcript] Time Unknown, After 8:53 p.m. "You're sure of the spelling?" Lee White and White House Operator looking for Fannie Lee Chaney, [Flash].
	Signing the Civil Rights Act, July 2, 1964
	August 4, 1964. 8:01 p.m. FBI Assistant Director Cartha "Deke" DeLoach notified LBJ that the bodies had been found.
	March 13, 1965 J. Edgar Hoover explains the $30,000 paid to an informant in the Miburn Case
	The controversial film from 1988

 

Materials for this course were developed by the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. Site design and Flash transcript+audio design by David Coleman. Flash transcript+audio files by David Coleman, Marc Selverstone, and the Presidential Recordings Program. Audio courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration and the Presidential Libraries of Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. For more resources on the White House tapes see www.whitehousetapes.org or click here or here.