Drawn Into Hell

By Don VanLandingham Sr.

Mississippi, 1964. A state torn apart by bigotry, hate and distrust. In June 1964 "Freedom Summer" sent Civil Rights volunteers into the state to help African Americans register to vote. Three of those workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Cheney met a violent end to their lives. This is a story about that tragedy. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aspire Publishing Hub, LLC
• Release date: Nov 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781958692691

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Drawn Into Hell

Copyright © 2022 by Don VanLandingham Sr.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

The views and opinions represented in this book are personal and belong solely to the author and do not represent those of people, institutions or organizations that the Author may or may not be associated with in professional or personal capacity, unless explicitly stated. Any views or opinions are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual.

This piece of content contains explicit, graphic, and discriminating materials that may or may not include:

• Graphic/Explicit Violence, especially towards people of color

• Hate Speech & Extreme Bigoted Sentiments

• Abuse, Slurs

Reader’s discretion is strongly advised.

ISBN

978-1-958692-68-4 (Paperback)

978-1-958692-69-1 (eBook)

Dedication

My mother, Corinne Brown VanLandingham, was at my father’s side during his work on the Mississippi Burning case. She typed all of his notes from a motel room in Meridian, MS, afraid that at any moment there would be a knock on the door and hooded figures would appear that would drag her off into nowhere.

She passed away in 2013 at the age of 103, active to the end, very attractive, and had a great sense of humor. She taught all of her three boys the value of hard work and perseverance. She was the sister of noted historian and author Dee Brown who wrote many books about the settling of the American West, his most famous being Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.

I dedicate this book to the memory of my mother.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This book is a fictional work based on actual historical events. Although the names of the three murdered victims are their actual names, as is the name of the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and the names of several of the public officials in the book are the actual names of those officials, all other names of persons involved in any way with the crime have been changed. This work of historical fiction was framed through many actual events that occurred prior to, during, and after the crimes were committed that are woven into the characters in the novel. The actual events of history have created the plot for this novel. However, any character in the novel that may appear to be reflective of any person living or dead, including those depictions of characters which bear the same name as that of the true historical person, is purely coincidental. This novel is based upon a true story, but the characters and their statements and actions are products of this historical fiction.

During the turbulent summer of 1964 three civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman came to Mississippi to assist in voter registration of blacks, who had been prevented from registering. The very day they arrived they turned up missing, sparking one of the greatest manhunts in the history of that state. There was a movie and there have been papers, documentaries and articles written about these events. However, recent revelations in a courtroom in New York have placed a new twist to the mystery, FBI code name MIBURN, but now known nationwide as the Mississippi Burning case.

My father was a career FBI agent and was stationed in Jackson, Mississippi, during the middle forties and early fifties. When he retired to Hilton Head Island in the early sixties, he found his services much in demand, both as an attorney and as a private investigator. After his death I began to read some of the cases he was involved in and found that he was retained as a private investigator regarding the tragic murders of the three young men near Philadelphia, Mississippi. His notes and my own research convinced me to tell the story from the viewpoint of a young, professional white man who wanted to make a difference in an area of our great country that resisted the inevitable change that has taken place since those dark days in the middle of the twentieth century.

I tried to make the story as authentic as possible, considering that it is a novel. Parts of the actual trial testimonies were used, as well as parts of the opening and closing arguments by Lead Prosecutor John Doar of the U.S. Justice Department, Civil Rights Division.

I received a tremendous amount of help in the writing and research of this historic novel. I want to thank my good friend and advisor, Dub Joiner, who gave me a lot of good advice and ideas. I also wish to thank and acknowledge Dr. Douglas O. Linder, University of Missouri, Kansas City School of Law, who allowed me to use material from two of his fine research publications, "The Mississippi Burning Trial; United States vs. Cecil Price et al" and Bending Towards Justice: John Doar and the Mississippi Burning Trial. I want to also acknowledge Mark Potok, Director, Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who granted permission for the use of their history of the Ku Klux Klan. I also want to thank my daughter, Jennifer Gillenwater, for the encouragement and advice she gave to me. But most of all, I want to thank my wife, Linda, who was an inspiration to me from the time the first seeds were planted. Thank you, sweetheart!

Don VanLandingham

PART 1

Introduction

Following the Civil War, the South struggled for years, trying desperately to regain the political, economic, and social status it enjoyed before the war. Nowhere was this more evident than in Mississippi. Blacks were no longer slaves but found very little relief in their new role as tenant farmers. Former slave owners used the same shacks that formerly held their slaves as rundown shanties for the blacks’ new role as farmers. They toiled the same land as they always had; the only difference was they got paid for it, that is, until the plantation owner came knocking at their door within a couple of hours after paying the week’s wages and then collected the weekly rent, leaving a small amount for food.

On the weekend, to keep the new free citizens in line, friends of the plantation owner who were members of a fledging fraternal group known as the Ku Klux Klan would dress up in white hoods and masks and call on the neighborhood. Wearing their spooky uniform, they would ride up to a black’s home at night and demand water.¹ The Klansman would gulp it down and demand more, having actually poured the water through a rubber tube that flowed into a concealed leather bottle. After draining several buckets, the rider would exclaim that he had not had a drink since he died on the battlefield. He would then get back on his horse and ride away. Since most of the former slaves were very superstitious, this would usually have its desired effect.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 1954 of Brown v. Board of Education, the state of Mississippi began to use more aggressive and imaginative tactics to try to intimidate blacks. In an effort to regain the state’s political status, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was formed to try to regain the state’s former economic status through the birth of the White Citizens’ Council, and the social and police effort saw the rebirth of the dreaded Ku Klux Klan.

The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, formed in 1956, became the imaginative tool of then Governor J.P. Coleman. Its purpose was to provide an investigative branch within the state government to maintain racial segregation by investigating and monitoring the activities of the civil rights movement. It enlisted spies from both races to pass information on to its investigators. Getting help from the blacks was easy because there were many black schoolteachers who received their salaries from the counties where they taught. Implied economic threats were used to convince many to help the commission with damaging information about those that tried to interrupt the status quo. Prior to Ross Barnet becoming governor in 1960, the commission’s aim appeared to be educational and keeping down racial tension. That aim was tame in comparison to the commission’s activities after Barnet became governor.

He fired those from within the commission with whom he disagreed and appointed those who would become more militant in their activities. He doubled the number of investigators and embarked the commission on a mission that reminded many of Hitler’s Gestapo.

Many wondered aloud where the FBI was in all of this. Many believe FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sympathized with the commission. Several of the commission’s investigators were former FBI agents, and at least two personal letters were written in 1959 from Hoover to the commission’s chief investigator. There also appeared to be close ties with the commission and the White Citizens’ Council.

The White Citizens’ Council was formed in 1954 in the delta town of Indianola. Its organizers and members were primarily bankers, plantation owners, doctors, lawyers, legislators, merchants, teachers, and preachers. The council sought to prevent the enforcement of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Council members publicly renounced the use of violence, but its subtle suggestions encouraged racial intimidations against blacks. As an example, black school teachers were expected to keep the council informed about meetings in the black communities under threat of their dismissal as school teachers. Therefore, the council’s real success lay in its ability to levy economic reprisals on those who supported and actively pushed for desegregation. It was common knowledge that many members of the White Citizens’ Council were also members of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Ku Klux Klan¹ was born following the Civil War near Pulaski, Tennessee, by six young former Confederate veterans as a social club but soon developed into America’s first terrorist organization. Operating primarily in the South, the Klan’s objects of hate were—and are—blacks, Jews, Catholics, and, more recently, the Hispanics. The official uniform is a ghoulish-looking white mask and a white cape, which is supposed to resemble the ghost of a confederate soldier. They set fire to wooden crosses with blazing torches.

Former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forest became the first imperial wizard of the Klan. Following the Civil War, the KKK, as it became known, spread mischief and then terror, primarily among the black communities. Much of the Klan’s early reputation was based on mischief, but soon the mischief turned ugly. The armed white men riding into black communities at night reminded many blacks of the pre—Civil War slave patrols.

Klansmen riding with their faces covered intensified the blacks’ fear. Physical whippings of black trouble-makers were commonplace. Clashes followed between Klansmen and blacks or Klansmen and northerners, known as carpetbaggers, who had come South. Thousands of whites from Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi joined the Klan, causing people to become alarmed about the escalating violence, not necessarily because they had sympathy for the victims, but because the violence was getting out of control. After all, anyone could put on a sheet and a mask and ride into the night to commit assault, robbery, rape, arson, or murder whether a member of the Klan or not.

By early 1868, stories about Klan activities were appearing in newspapers nationwide, and reconstruction governors realized they faced a terrorist organization. Orders went out from state capitals and Union army headquarters to suppress the Klan. Several attempts were made to infiltrate the organization. However, this proved to be unsuccessful, as evidenced by the infiltrators being killed or mutilated.

In 1871, Congress held hearings on the Klan and passed a tough anti-Klan law. Under the new federal law, Southerners lost their jurisdiction over the crimes of assault, robbery, and murder, and the president was authorized to declare martial law. Night riding and the wearing of masks were expressly prohibited. Consequently, hundreds of Klansmen were arrested even though few actually went to prison. Therefore, for all practical purposes, this ended the Ku Klux Klan’s first era of terror.

However, in the South, another series of events occurred that helped breathe life back into the Klan several decades later. The old cry of white supremacy created a feeling that blacks had to be kept in their place. The 1890s marked the beginning of the Deep South’s most divisive attempts to keep blacks politically, socially, and economically powerless. Most state segregation laws date from that period. It was also the beginning of a series of lynchings of blacks by white mobs.

After the turn of the century, a Spanish American War veteran turned preacher turned salesman by the name of William J. Simmons collected a group of eager men together in 1915. On Thanksgiving eve, Simmons herded his group onto a hired bus and drove them from Atlanta to nearby Stone Mountain. There, before a cross of pine boards, Simmons lit a match, and the Ku Klux Klan of the twentieth century was born.

The purpose of his Klan was graphically illustrated by Simmons when he was introduced to an audience of Georgia Klansmen. Standing before the Klansmen, he drew a Colt automatic pistol, a revolver, and a cartridge belt from his coat and arranged them on the table before him. Plunging a Bowie knife into the table beside the guns, he issued an invitation: "Now let the niggers, Catholics, Jews, and all