Reaction
The national uproar caused by the disappearance of the civil rights workers led President Lyndon Johnson to force J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to investigate the case. Hoover's antipathy to civil rights groups caused him to resist until Johnson used indirect threats of political reprisals. One hundred and fifty FBI agents including Major Case Inspector Joseph Sullivan were sent to Neshoba county to investigate. During the investigation, searchers including Navy divers and the FBI discovered the bodies of at least seven other Mississippi blacks, whose disappearances over the past several years had not attracted attention outside of their local communities.
The disappearance of the three activists captured national attention; it took 44 days for investigators to discover where they had been buried. Johnson and civil rights activists used the outrage over their deaths in their efforts to bring about the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed July 2, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Walter Cronkite's CBS newscast broadcast on June 25, 1964 called the disappearences as "The focus of the whole country's concern."
Mississippi officials resented the outside attention. The Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey said, "They're just hiding and trying to cause a lot of bad publicity for this part of the state." The Mississippi governor Paul Johnson dismissed concern by stating that "they could be in Cuba".
Read more about this topic: Mississippi Civil Rights Workers' Murders
Famous quotes containing the word reaction:
“Christianity was only a very strong and singularly well-timed Salvation Army movement that happened to receive help from an unusual and highly dramatic incident. It was a Puritan reaction in an age when, no doubt, a Puritan reaction was much wanted; but like all sudden violent reactions, it soon wanted reacting against.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“An actor must communicate his author’s given message—comedy, tragedy, serio- comedy; then comes his unique moment, as he is confronted by the looked-for, yet at times unexpected, reaction of the audience. This split second is his; he is in command of his medium; the effect vanishes into thin air; but that moment has a power all its own and, like power in any form, is stimulating and alluring.”
—Eleanor Robson Belmont (1878–1979)
“In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means; only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)