Racism on Trial: From the Medgar Evers Murder Case to Ghosts of Mississippi

After Medgar Evers, a civil rights worker, was shot in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963, a local white supremacist named Byron De La Beckwith was arrested for the crime. Two court cases ended in mistrials, but due to the efforts of Evers’s widow Myrlie and District Attorney Bobby DeLaughter, Beckwith was finally brought to justice more than thirty years after the murder. Wim Coleman and Pat Perrin describe the history of the crime, the legal concepts involved, and the movie made about the events, Ghosts of Mississippi.