August 7, 1964, Mississippi. Ben Chaney and his mother at the funeral mass for his older brother, civil rights worker James Chaney who had been killed along with Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner on June 21, 1964. Photographed by Bill Eppridge. The bodies of the three civil rights workers were found on August 4, 1964 buried in an earthen dam on private property. The FBI received a tip from an informant. While searching for the 3 missing men, the FBI had dredged all the ponds in the area and found several other bodies that might never have been discovered. The story about these murders became a fictional movie in 1988 - Mississippi Burning based on the murder investigation. Forty five years later on June 21, 2005 Edgar Ray Killed a KKK organizer was found guilty on three counts of manslaughter for arranging the murders. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison. September 30, 2022 - a new exhibit of Bill Eppridge's work at Monroe Gallery of Photography
