In June 1964, three civil-rights volunteers disappeared in Philadelphia, Miss. In early August, 44 days later, police found their bodies buried in an earthen dam.

The activists -- Michael Schwerner, 24, James Chaney, 21, and Andrew Goodman, 20 -- did not share a final resting place. In the '60s, no cemetery would take both blacks and whites.

The three were part of the 1964 Freedom Summer, an effort to register black voters in Mississippi. The state was targeted because at the time less than 7 percent of blacks were registered. The volunteers were investigating a firebombing in a church when they were killed.

Though several people were successfully prosecuted on federal conspiracy charges, no one ever has been convicted of state murder charges.

The incident later became the basis of the movie "Mississippi Burning."

Forty years later, three teenagers from the Chicago area, Sarah Siegel, Allison Nichols and Brittany Saltiel, began investigating topics for a national history project. The girls are from Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Ill.

A worthy subject

When their teacher, Barry Bradford, mentioned the murders of the civil-rights workers, the girls knew they'd found a subject worth their time and effort.

"We didn't need to hear any other topic ideas because it just seemed to click with our group," said Siegel, one of the two girls Y-Press recently interviewed. "It was just something that we had not heard about, and at the same time we thought that it sounded really important. So we felt like more people should know about it."

What began as a 10-minute documentary for the National History Day competition became something more. Inspired by the story of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, the girls dug deeper into the case, and in part due to their efforts, law-enforcement officers arrested 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen in January. His trial is set for later this year.

Educating the public was one of the primary goals of the project from the beginning.

"I mean, obviously we're too young to be lawyers or to be on the jury," Nichols said.

"We can't do a whole lot at the actual trial itself, but we can educate people. So I'd say that education was the main purpose of our video," she said.

"We were especially interested because there was this added element of a movement to reopen the case and we knew we wanted to be a part of that."

The team began its research in summer 2003 using traditional library sources but found that primary sources, particularly civil rights veterans, were more helpful. In total, they used more than 160 sources for the project. In addition to overcoming the obstacles involved in researching any historical question, the team had to battle adults' preconceptions.

Weren't taken seriously

"When we first started, some of the people we talked to, when we told them we were interested in helping to reopen the case, seemed surprised because we were 15 when we started this.

They said, 'Oh, isn't that nice, how cute, you know that's very sweet, good luck,' " Nichols said. "But you could tell that some people didn't really believe us."

However, the girls persevered.

"And after each interview, like there was always, 'Do you have anyone else you think we should talk to?' And we really kind of infiltrated the whole civil-rights veterans' network, and got other people we wouldn't have thought of by ourselves just because people were so nice and suggested other people to contact," Siegel said. "The fact that we were not a part of the civil-rights group, I think, intrigued people."

Talked to family members

This networking led them to people they originally thought were out of reach, including Killen himself, who answered the girls' questions through Bradford, their teacher.

In January 2004, the trio traveled to New York to interview family members of Chaney and Goodman, changing the dynamic of the project.

"When we met the family members, it wasn't just a history project any more. We could see how the deaths of their family members had affected these people and how they had had to live with that for 40 years," Nichols said.

Particularly moving were their interviews with Ben Chaney, who was 11 when his brother was murdered, and Dr. Carolyn Goodman, Andrew's mother.

"She has such a positive outlook and after so many years," Siegel said of Dr. Goodman. "She hasn't become bitter after this tragedy, so that really inspired us to get going and get our work to progress."

"When we met the grown-up Ben Chaney," Nichols explained, "it was really strange for us to think that this little boy, crying at the funeral, was the same man who we were talking to. And just to see how he grew up with the knowledge of what had gone on and the knowledge that no one had ever been tried for the murder of his big brother."

The final documentary featured footage of Chaney crying inconsolably at his brother's funeral.

"The first time we watched the video of Chaney as a boy crying, we all had tears in our eyes also," Siegel recalled. "And then it was a really interesting thing to see him as a grown man and talking about his case. I mean you could just see the passion in his eyes, and just how he wanted to see justice, and that in turn inspired us more."

Drafted resolution

After the girls finished their proj ect, which was a finalist at the national competition, with the help of their teacher they went on to draft a resolution calling for the indictment of those accused of committing the murders.

They submitted it to civil rights veteran Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who together with several congressmen introduced a revised version in Congress last June. That move brought renewed attention to the murders, putting pressure on the Mississippi justice system. In addition, the Mississippi community where the murders occurred formed a coalition, which put additional spotlight on the case and led to the arrest of Killen.

Ultimately, the fact that they met their goal of educating the public about the issue pleased the team most.

"Even if the case had not been reopened, we still would've been able to educate people about the civil rights movement and the fact that it's not a closed book," explained Siegel.

"It was just really amazing to see how all of these things have transformed so many people's lives," Nichols said. "And that's why it's so important that everyone know what happened and that everyone study history so that they can learn from it and they can learn about these people's stories."

ASSISTANT EDITORS: Lisa Callahan, 17; Adrienne McLean, 16; Rebecca Salois, 16; Katie Qualkinbush, 18.

REPORTER: Jessika Officer, 12.

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Y-Press is a nonprofit news organization with offices in The Indianapolis Star building. Stories are researched, reported and written by teams of young people ages 10 to 18. For more information, call (317) 444-2010 or send an e-mail to ypress@in.net.

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