Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers (PB) (2002)

The history is well known: On June 12, 1963, Mississippi's courageous NAACP chief, Medgar Evers, was gunned down by white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith. Tried twice by all-white juries, Beckwith escaped conviction for three decades. But then Mississippi began to confront its tormented past. And in the 1990s, when Beckwith was sent to jail by a crusading young prosecutor, the family of Medgar Evers finally got justice. Hailed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the Lillian Smith Award, Of Long Memory reveals how this remarkable reversal took place. Nossiter uses the tools of memory, history, and reportage--and the clear vantage point of an outsider, a Northerner--to portray an entire state quite literally summoning up its ghosts. A new epilogue discusses other civil rights cases now being reconsidered, and skillfully shows how the South is finding a way to create justice where by product had existed before.