On the night of June 21, 1964, three civil rights activists, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, were abducted and murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan near Philadelphia, Mississippi. These young men were participating in the Freedom Summer campaign aimed at registering African American voters in the South. Their tragic deaths highlighted the extreme resistance to civil rights efforts and had a profound impact on the nation, leading to increased public support for the civil rights movement and the subsequent passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
