MISSISSIPPI BURNING is the name of a motion picture, released in 1988, starring Gene Hackman and Willem DaFoe, loosely based on the murders of 3 Civil Rights workers in Mississippi, during the “Freedom Summer” of 1964.  James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were lured to Philadelphia, Mississippi, and executed by the Ku Klux Klan. No one was ever convicted of their murders, until over 40 years later when Jerry Mitchell, an investigative reporter with The Charion-Ledger, in Jackson, Mississippi, convinced authorities to reopen more than one cold murder case from the Civil Rights Era, prompting one colleague to call him "the South's "Simon Wiesenthal."  In 2009, he received a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation.

Author John Grisham wrote of Mr. Mitchell: “For almost two decades, investigative journalist Jerry Mitchell doggedly pursued the Klansmen responsible for some of the most notorious murders of the civil rights movement. His book, “Race Against Time,” is his amazing story. Thanks to him, and to courageous prosecutors, witnesses, and FBI agents, justice finally prevailed.”

It is my honor to welcome Jerry Mitchell to Murder Most Foul today.