It horrified a nation, electrified a movement, and eventually changed America.
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers–Andrew Goodman, 20, Michael Schwerner, 24, and James Chaney, 21–were killed by reputed Klan members near Philadelphia, Miss. The murders roused millions of average Americans for whom the civil rights movement previously had been a faraway and little-noticed struggle. The events of 40 years ago have once again come to the forefront with the trial of Edgar Ray Killen, a 79-year-old former Klan leader and Baptist preacher, accused of organizing the crime. On the eve of Killen's trial, photographer Jim Lo Scalzo explores the landscape of modern-day Neshoba County as a measure of the role of environment in this civil rights-era crime.
