Faith Middleton Show: Mississippi Tries To Heal After A Troubled Racial History

Mississippi seems a place set apart from the rest of the country. The home of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Tennessee Williams is also the state that bred men like Byron De La Beckwith (convicted in the murder of Medgar Evers), Edward Ray Killen (convicted in the murders of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney), and countless other race-related offenders. Mississippi’s legacy has been defined by racial hatred and violence, rather than by its cultural riches, and this is at least in part due to the long-delayed prosecution of many such criminals. The past fifteen years have seen the resolution of seven cold cases from the civil rights era, and James Ford Seale’s makes number eight.

Rural Franklin County sets the scene for this latest chapter in Mississippi’s effort to overcome its violent past. In THE PAST IS NEVER DEAD: The Trial of James Ford Seale and Mississippi’s Struggle for Redemption (Basic Civitas; October 5, 2009), Edgar Award-winning author Harry N. MacLean guides us through the gruesome events of May 2, 1964, a day that saw two young black men die at the hands of Seale and his fellow Klansmen. Yet more than just an account of two terrible murders, MacLean’s is a story about the prosecution of Seale and the overarching quest for redemption in the American South.

(From Basic Civitas Books)