The disappearance of the civil-rights workers created a national uproar. As the federal government launched a massive 44-day manhunt, Rita Schwerner, Michael’s widow, said that the reason the widespread search was happening at all was because two of the three men were white. Two days after they were killed, authorities found their torched station wagon in Bogue Chitto Creek. As law-enforcement and military officials searched the surrounding area for the three victims, they came across the bodies of two Black men who had gone missing earlier that year. Federal agents ultimately found the three bodies they were looking for on Old Jolly Farm, buried in an earthen dam.
It’s perfectly possible to come to Philadelphia, Mississippi, without ever encountering this history.
A few weeks before I went on the tour with my stepfather, I visited the Philadelphia–Neshoba County Historical Museum, a white wooden house off a narrow street that dead-ends in the woods. I had heard there was nothing in the museum about Mount Zion or the three civil-rights workers, and wanted to see for myself.
The museum manages to be both in the center of town and tucked away, and has been open since the ’90s. One day last fall, I finally succeeded at getting inside—the hours of operation are a mere suggestion. I rang the bell and a volunteer, an older white woman, came to greet me. She offered a tour.
For about half an hour, she walked me through the exhibits that detailed what downtown social life was like in the 1920s. An entire room on the first floor is dedicated to the country-music star and Philadelphia native Marty Stuart. Across from Stuart’s room is another music-centered room, dedicated to Otis Rush and Foots Baxstrum, whose histories have been given a wall apiece. We trekked upstairs to the veterans’ memorial, in a dusty room that felt like an attic.
Our final stop was a replica cabin of the kind you see at “Mississippi’s Giant Houseparty,” the Neshoba County Fair. The event is an annual week of horse racing, politicking, beer chugging, and whiteness. The fair was where Ronald Reagan launched his presidential campaign with a speech about states’ rights, a loud dog whistle not far in distance or time from the Freedom Summer murders. It’s the town’s pride, and part of the reason Philadelphia’s tagline is “Our fair city.”
At the end of the tour, I asked my guide if maybe I had missed the Mount Zion exhibit. “This is supposed to be back before the ’60s, you know, and all that happened in the ’60s,” she said. “We don’t have anything on that.”
We stood in silence.
A museum board member later confirmed that it doesn’t have anything on Mount Zion or the murders, and that curators focus on the agricultural and industrial history of the county, not social justice or race. “We stay away from issues that would be controversial,” he said.
