Informative Speech: 1964 Murders Of Three Civil Rights Workers

• General Purpose: to inform
• Specific purpose: to inform my audience about the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers
• Thesis: This horrible tragedy had a profound impact by bringing national attention to the civil rights movement and the atrocities of segregationist culture.

Introduction
I. Attention Getter: How many of you grew up in a small town? If you did and it is anything like the town I grew up in you know that in a small town everybody knows everything about everybody else and football is pretty important.
II. Listener Relevance Link: You all probably feel as though you know most everything there is to know about your hometown, and I did as well until I made a very shocking discovery
III. Speaker credibility statement: As I did research for my history class and went on a local civil

When Barnett mentioned it to the other Klansmen, they mistakenly assumed that the civil rights workers were there. The Klan beat some of the constituents of the church and burned the church to the ground.
f. Of course whenever Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman found out about what happened, they rushed back to Mississippi to investigate and speak with some of the people in the community.

Transitions: Those were the events preceding the day of the murder, now I will discuss the actual day of the murders.

II. The day of the murders:
a. On the day of the murders, June 20th, the men left Meridian to go t
b. They paid their bail and thought that they were safe; however, they were unaware that Klansman were waiting on them to be released so that they could ambush them.
c. The Klansman including the Deputy Sheriff that had arrested them chased Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman down Highway 19, a major road that runs between Meridian and Philadelphia.
d. The three men were subsequently shot and quickly taken and buried at a local farm.

Transitions: After the murders took place the families eventually got word of the men’s disappearances.

III. After the