clarionledger.com – The FBI put out this poster of the three missing civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, after they disappeared June 21, 1964. Forty-four days later, FBI agents made the grisly discovery of their bodies, buried in an earthen dam. (Photo: FBI)

June 21, 1915: In Frank Guinn and J.J. Beal v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision that declared “grandfather clauses” used by Southern states to disenfranchise African Americans were unconstitutional.

June 21, 1964: A group of more than 20 Klansmen killed three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner south of Philadelphia, Mississippi. Hundreds of FBI agents came to investigate the case, which the agency called “Mississippi Burning,” or MIBURN for short. Forty-four days later, agents found their bodies buried 15 feet beneath an earthen dam. In a 1967 federal trial, seven men were convicted on conspiracy charges with none serving more than six years in prison. On the same day 41 years later (in 2005), Edgar Ray Killen was convicted after testimony showed he helped orchestrate the trio’s slayings. Eleven years later, state and federal authorities officially closed the case.