Mississippi Burning, 1964: Perspectives from the Lyndon Johnson Tapes

Exactly 41 years after the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman, the state of Mississippi obtained its first homicide conviction in the case. On Tuesday June 21, 2005, 9 white and 3 black jurors convicted 80-year-old Edgar Ray “Preacher” Killen of manslaughter for his role in orchestrating the nighttime roadside lynching, which transpired approximately a half-mile from his house. For his crime, Killen received the maximum sentence of 60 years. ...

Despite the existence of court records, news reports, oral histories, and documents relating to the investigation, the violent events of that summer will never be entirely clear, and students of history will continue to debate the ambiguities of evidence in attempting to understand that muggy, 80 degree Mississippi night. One resource, though, that captures the immediacy of their disappearance and the complications it presented for federal and state authorities--and for activists—is the collection of secret recordings made by President Lyndon Johnson.

On this website is an abbreviated timeline of the incident and selected conversations recorded in LBJ’s Oval Office. These materials are from a forthcoming forthcoming Miller Center volume, Kent Germany and David Carter, eds., Crisis of Victory: Lyndon Johnson, the Politics of Race, and the White House Tapes.