White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

Within a year, their membership was up to around six thousand, and they had Klaverns (local branches of the Ku Klux Klan) in over half of the counties in Mississippi.

In his first attempt to kill Schwerner, Bowers assembled 30 White Knights on the evening of Memorial Day 1964 and surrounded the Mount Zion United Methodist Church while a meeting was taking place inside it.

At the time of the fire, Schwerner had been in Ohio working on helping the National Council of Churches find more students who were willing to participate in the Freedom Summer project.

They were heading to Longdale in Neshoba County, where the sheriff, Lawrence A. Rainey, and his deputy, Cecil Price, were members of the Klan, although the Klansmen never publicly announced it.

[5] When the three activists arrived in Neshoba County, Price saw their car driving down the highway and pulled them over on the premise that they had possibly been involved in the burning of the Mount Zion United Methodist Church.

They were confined in the Neshoba County Jail and denied their right to make phone calls, while Price worked out plans for their murder with another White Knights member, Edgar Ray Killen.

Their bodies were placed together in a hollow at a dam construction site on a farm which belonged to trucking company owner Olen Lovell Burrage and then they were covered with tons of dirt which was moved by a Caterpillar D4, most likely driven by heavy machinery operator Herman Tucker who owned the machine and had been hired by Burrage to build the dam.

Bowers and Alton Wayne Roberts (who shot Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner)[6] each received the longest prison sentences, 10 years.

It was thought that Clary could build membership in the Klan due to his celebrity status as a professional wrestler.