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To the Church Ruins. The next day, Sunday, June 21, the three men got haircuts from a Negro barber in Meridian. They planned to drive to Longdale, Miss., 50 miles away in adjoining Neshoba County, to inspect the ruins of the Mount Zion Methodist Church, a meeting place for civil rights groups, which had been burned to the ground five days before. Bombings and burnings seem fashionable in Mississippi nowadays. Recently, churches at Brandon, Ruleville, Clinton and Hattiesburg have been either damaged or destroyed by fire or bombs; a Negro home in McComb has been bombed, and the N.A.A.C.P. meeting place in Moss Point was set afire.
Before leaving town, they dropped by the COFO office. Schwerner told an aide to call the FBI if he was not back by 4:30 that afternoon. Threats had become a commonplace in his life, but in recent weeks they had seemed even more ominous. Besides, he knew that the license number of the station wagon had been circulated by the area's Citizens Council. Chaney had the car's tank filled with gasoline before leaving Meridian; the three workers did not want to make any unnecessary stops in dangerous territory.
It was hot, nearly 100°, and hardly a breeze stirred the mimosa trees and scrub pines that dotted the landscape near the charred church ruins. There was not much to see at the burned church site—a twisted tin roof and a blackened iron bell in the ashes. The three drove a mile down the road to the farmhouse of Junior Roosevelt Cole, 58, a Negro and lay leader of the church, who told them that on the night of the fire he was dragged from his car in the churchyard and clubbed unconscious by a mob of whites. Schwerner asked Cole to come to Meridian Tuesday. "We want to get this fire business straightened out," Schwerner told him. "We want to stop all this."
The Search. At 5 o'clock that afternoon, while driving back to Meridian, the Ford was stopped on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Miss. (pop. 5,500), by Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price. Price arrested Chaney on a charge of driving 65 m.p.h. in a 30-m.p.h. zone, took all three to the county jail, just off the town square.
While booking them—Chaney for speeding, and Schwerner and Goodman "for investigation"—Mrs. Millie Herring, wife of the jailer, wrote "Negro male" after each man's name, then scratched out the entry beside Schwerner's and Goodman's and penned in "white." Said she later: "I declare, I was just so confused I wrote it wrong." All three were questioned, fed a meal of spoon bread, green peas, potatoes and salad by Mrs. Herring. Then, after Chancy paid a $20 fine, they were told to get out of the county.
Deputy Price followed them to the edge of town, later said he saw their car head south down Mississippi Highway 19 toward Meridian. Price was the last person known to have seen Schwerner, Chancy and Goodman. That was at 10:30 Sunday night.