Boys Laughing on Bridge, Philadelphia, Mississippi

After spending a week photographing the Freedom Summer training in Oxford, OH, Steve Schapiro traveled down to Philadelphia, MS, to document the ongoing investigation into the disappearance of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. The three men had driven down from Oxford on June 20 and disappeared the next day after investigating the recent burning of the Historic Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Philadelphia, MS. Schapiro captured this image during his travels in Mississippi, which serves as a reminder of the dismissive and cruel attitudes of many white Southerners during the civil rights era. Schapiro remembered that while the FBI undertook a massive search for the three men, “tragically, the town was just laughing at the whole thing.”