Led by Bob Moses of SNCC through the Council of Federated Projects (COFO), an umbrella group uniting Mississippi civil-rights organizations, the 1964 Freedom Summer was designed to send white and black students from around the country into the state to register African Americans. Whites responded by expanding their police forces and organizing Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations to meet them.

Within a few days of Freedom Summer’s start, three volunteers—two white people (Andrew Goodman and Micheal Schwerner) and one black person (James Chaney)— disappeared. The FBI discovered their bodies six weeks later buried in an earthen dam.

The disappearance, discovery and revelations about Klan involvement increased media interest in COFO’s work in Mississippi. This increased tensions between white and black activists, the latter having witnessed many blacks disappear previously without media attention. Registration of blacks in the state was limited, although the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party grew out of the Freedom Summer.