The Ford station wagon topped a hill before disappearing into the darkness.

Mickey Schwerner drove,

deep in thought. Fellow New Yorker Andy Goodman propped his body against the passenger door,
drifting off to sleep. Mississippi native James Chaney, the lone African-American, swallowed hard,
shifting in the backseat.
Two cars and a pickup truck raced to catch up. Schwerner spotted them in his rearview mirror.
“Uh-oh.”
The noise woke Goodman. “What is it? What do they want?”
Schwerner rolled down the window and stuck out his arm, motioning for the car to pass. “Is it a
cop?”
Goodman gazed back. “I can’t see.”
The car crunched into the wagon, and Schwerner wondered aloud if their pursuers were playing a
joke.
“They ain’t playin’,” Chaney said. “You better believe it.”
Metal and glass smashed again. “What are we going to do?” Goodman asked.
Schwerner told his fellow civil rights workers to hold on. He jerked the wagon off the blacktop
onto a dirt road, sending up a swirl of dust. His pursuers weren’t shaken. Instead, they flipped on police
lights and began to close the distance again.
Schwerner spotted the crimson glow in his rearview mirror and cursed. “It is a cop.”
Goodman advised, “Better stop.”
“Okay, sit tight, you guys. Don’t say anything. Let me talk.”
Schwerner turned to Chaney. “We’ll be all right. Just relax.”
The wagon squeaked to a stop. Doors opened and slammed shut, interrupting a chorus of frogs.
Flashlights bathed them in light. A Klansman with a crew cut told Schwerner, “Y’all think you
can drive any speed you want around here?”
“You had us scared to death, man,” Schwerner replied.
“Don’t you call me ‘man,’ Jew-boy.”
“No, sir, what should I call you?”
“Don’t call me nothing, nigger-lovin’ Jew-boy. You just listen.”
“Yes, sir.”
The crew cut moved closer to the driver and sniffed. “Hell, you’re even startin’ to smell like a
nigger, Jew-boy.”
Schwerner reassured Goodman, “We’ll be all right.”
“Sure you will, nigger lover.”
“He seen your face,” a fellow Klansman advised. “That ain’t good. You don’t want him seein’
your face.”
“Oh,” the crew cut replied, “it don’t make no difference no more.”
He pressed his pistol against Schwerner’s temple and pulled the trigger. Blood spattered against
Goodman. “Oh, shit, we’re into it now, boys,” one Klansman said.
Three shots echoed in the night air.
“You only left me a nigger, but at least I shot me a nigger,” another Klansman said with a
chuckle, joining a choir of laughter.
Everything went dark. White letters spelled out on a black screen: “Mississippi, 1964.”

Excerpted from the book Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the
Civil Rights Era by Jerry Mitchell. Copyright © 2020 by Jerry Mitchell. Reprinted by permission of
Simon & Schuster, Inc. All Rights Reserved.