Michael Schwerner was one of three Congress of Racial Equality field/social workers killed in Philadelphia. Civil Rights activists were resented and held under suspicion by white Mississippians. Spies paid by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a taxpayer-funded agency, kept track of all northerners and suspected activists.

Andrew Goodman worked with Michael Schwerner too work on a project of the Congress of Racial Equality to register black people to vote in Mississippi.

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