The murders of the three civil rights workers in 1964 was preceded by arresting the three men on trumped up charges of speeding in order to hold them in the county jail while the Klan mobilized their forces.
Obviously it was a farce and everyone knew it, but it seems to me there was a simple retort that Johnson and others in the national government could have used to point out the absurdity.
Only one of the men was driving the car. Let’s give Mississippi the initial benefit of the doubt (in the early stages of the investigation) and defer to the state by politely agreeing that it had the right to arrest the driver for speeding. However, under what bullshit excuse were the two passengers arrested? I know of no law that holds passengers responsible for a driver’s speeding.
Why didn’t Johnson get on the phone with the Mississippi governor and ask him why in the hell passengers are being arrested because a driver is speeding? Why was this not mentioned?