University of Mississippi Medical Center Hospital Loading Dock and Morgue

Both the morgue and loading dock of the University Mississippi Medical Center hold poignant and perhaps unexpected significance to both the institution's and the state's history. The loading dock and the morgue bore witness to the catalytic and harrowing events stemming from the Civil Rights movements in the early 1960s in Mississippi. The joint murder of three young activists -- James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner -- in Neshoba County by local law enforcement and the Ku Klux Klan in June, 1964, resulted in a controlled and arguably rigged investigation that brought the Civil Rights movement, medicine, and UMMC crashing together. Forty-four days after the three civil rights workers were slain their bodies were discovered and brought to the UMMC morgue for autopsy. The loading dock and morgue are not open to the public.

In the summer of 1964 volunteers from all over the United States, both Black and white, had poured into Mississippi in order to participate in the creation of a voter registration drive and the creation of other community infrastructure intended to support African Americans. This "Freedom Summer" was done in an attempt to provide the African American community with the tools and resources needed to achieve political, social, and economic equality while still supporting the Civil Rights movement. One of the ways in which the volunteers hoped to achieve this was by the creation of Freedom Schools. Freedom Schools were free, temporary schooling options for young African American children in the community meant not only to reintroduce learning, but to educate the youth on the Civil Rights movement. A decade after Brown v. Board of Education, which mandated school desegregation, Mississippi schools were still not desegregated, and many African American children were not receiving a fair or equal education. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were visiting a destroyed site of one such Freedom School in the hours before they were arrested by then local deputy sheriff and Klan member Cecil Price, and subsequently murdered.

On June 21, 1964, Goodman,Schwerner and Chaney convened in Meridian, Mississippi. All three men were part of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) which was the “parent” organization of the Congress for racial equality or CORE. These organizations were pivotal to the Civil Rights movement in the summer of 1964. The COFO headquarters were located in Meridian at the time. All three men met at the headquarters before traveling to Longdale, Mississippi, to investigate the destruction of the Mount Zion Church. It had been the home for one of Mississippi's Freedom Schools that the three men had previously advocated for and helped establish. Understanding the danger the men faced, they were given a self-imposed curfew of 4:00 pm. If they had not returned by that point, the members at the headquarter were to assume something was wrong. 

Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney were able to travel to Longdale and visit the Mount Zion Church relatively undisturbed. But traveling back to Meridian the men decided to take a different route, a simpler and faster way home in order to achieve their 4:00 pm check-in. This path would take them through Philadelphia, Mississippi. In Philadelphia, Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney were pulled over by the local law enforcement deputy sheriff, Cecil Price. Chaney, the only African American man of the trio, was arrested for speeding, while Goodman and Schwerner were detained. The men were kept in the Neshoba county jail well into the night before being released.

The Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi, of which Cecil Price was a member, had been keeping a close eye on the proceedings of the freedom summer. The hate organization championed a swift and violent push back against any and all attempts of equality and fairness that the Freedom Summer events were attempting to promote.

Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner were released late into the night from Neshoba county jail and attempted to return home. They were immediately followed and tailed by Cecil Price, who was joined moments later by multiple other members of the KKK who had conspired earlier in the day to murder the three men when they were detained. The exact number of men who participated in the heinous murder to follow was never fully confirmed and only ten men would later be linked officially to it. The three men were driven off the road and cornered by the local Ku Klux Klan members. Goodman and Schwerner were shot and left to bleed out while Chaney was tortured and mutilated before finally also being shot. They were then buried in an earthen dam on the land of a local KKK member. 

Other COFO and CORE members had at this point alerted government authorities and the trio were searched for, to no avail originally, even with the heightened press and publicity surrounding the events The entire nation was now tuning in to watch Mississippi unravel. It was not until an anonymous tip came through that the men's remains were found forty-four days later. In the forty-four days it took to locate the three men, multiple other missing African American community members young and old were discovered, only serving to further highlight the frequency of murder and fear prevalent in the race relations of Mississippi during this time.

After the three men's bodies were discovered they were then taken to UMMC.

At UMMC the men were brought in on the loading dock in order to access the hospital. From outside the hospital the loading dock was the established access to the morgue for all entrants. Multiple reporters and spectators surrounded the gurneys, straining to see the bodies of the men that had thrust Mississippi and the Civil Rights movement occurring there back into the spotlight. 

The morgue then also became a sight of significance. The three men's bodies would be housed there for an additional two months where the coroner was tasked with assigning cause of death. After two months, the coroner was still unable and more than likely unwilling to provide a conclusive cause of death, or to even firmly state that the men in fact had been killed. While a separate autopsy report was ultimately filed the delay was still felt. The three men's bodies had been gone for forty-four days and were then sent into the morgue of UMMC by way of the loading dock, establishing the UMMC morgue as an important site of Mississippi's history. 

“CHANEY WAS GIVEN A BRUTAL BEATING; Re‐Examination Is Made of Slain Rights Worker.” The New York Times. The New York Times, August 8, 1964. https://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/08/archives/chaney-was-given-a-brutal-beating-reexamination-is-made-of-slain.html.

deShazo, Richard D. Essay. In The Racial Divide in American Medicine: Black Physicians and the Struggle for Justice in Health Care, 83–94. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2020.

Institute, Winters. “The Murder of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.” MS Civil Rights Project, 2020. https://mscivilrightsproject.org/neshoba/event-neshoba/the-murder-of-chaney-goodman-and-schwerner/.

Lucas, Jim. “1964 – Freedom Summer and Neshoba County, MS.” Jim Lucas Photography, 2015. http://www.jimlucasphotography.com/civil-rights-movement-in-mississippi-1964-1968/1964-freedom-summer-and-neshoba-county-ms/.

“Mississippi Burning.” FBI. FBI, May 18, 2016. https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/mississippi-burning.

Press, The Associated. “Mississippi: Convictions Upheld (Published 2007).” The New York Times. The New York Times, April 13, 2007. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/us/13brfs-killen.html.