rocky mountain news closed, that was a sad day for everybody. there went a number of jobs in journalism that were never to be recovered and as the denver post continue to shrink, that's when things began to get real tough specially for the press club and other competing places where they use today meet, the university club or the pencil code club and others that have felt the effect but that's when things really changed here. we have a local come in that was going to take a look at some things, maybe offer some advise and he said in a way, made a very good point, because these days while i look at it much per positively than he did, this is a great museum and for people who aren't typically going to experience the essence of prize and be able to come and be around that for an event, yeah, it makes it a good museum. it's as important as it can be at any point in time if you -- if you truly honor the past and you want the future to be as positive as it possibly could be . for the different press club to go away would be tragic because all of that history would be lost. everybody knee comes -- new walks into the front door and walk around and they say, i had no idea, and by the time they leave, they want to return. i don't know how many places you can find like that but i know this place is always like that. >> for more information on book tv's recent visit to denver and many other destinations on our city's tour, go to c-span.org slash citiestour. [inaudible conversations] >> welcome, everyone. ayes chris with the mississippi department of archives and history.y. if you've not already, please silence your cell phones. welcome to the civil rights history panel number two sponsored by pigott and johnson. we would also thank the mississippi legislature. we could not ask for a grander setting for it. thank you to the authors, the panelists, they are all authors, their books are all for sale a downstairs here if you've not bought them. i urge you to check them out. our panelists will also be signing the books, there's a schedule for when they'll bebe signing in the brochure and they should all be available downstairs later if they have not already. but thank you for doing this with us, our moderator today isp pamela junior, the director of the smith robertson cultural center. >> good afternoon, i'm pamela junior, the director of smithal robertson mees yuim and culture center. let me tell you how much of an honor specially in this room and the things that happened here but mostly because we have the phenomenal authors. let's just give them a hand already, please. [applause] book, >> i'm such a big fan. they said, yaw really read the book, yes, i did. we have martha wyatt, she's written the book my triumph over prejudice, a memoir raising a large family in jefferson county mississippi coming of age during the years of the civil rights movement.and our next book delta rainbow byb sal sally thompson. she has lived in memphis, tennessee for over 50 years, you're a tennessean. she has authored three blocks. next is patricia michelle boyett, director of rehours center at loyola university which she teaches courses on race and gender and oppression and resistance and she authors t book right to revolt and our next panelist is so the hefner's left the home. i was in the back talking and when i was thinking about civil rights and mississippi and all the power players that were such a large part of where we are today, legacies, those soldierses, marchers that made it possible and to have authors to be able to write about the wonderful people are to do a memoir, with that i am going to let the authors talk for about five minutes starting here. >> good afternoon, my name is martha wyatt, my book from a child up until 1990. i didn't play a major part in civil rights but a major part of my life. i wrote about growing and my whole world was black. i never came in contact with white people until 1967 when i was integrated in schools andoo that was an eye-opener for me because my first day of schoolme you see all the white faces, almost like i'm looking at today and you begin to wonder when people say, well, i feel black, i felt black that day, but i no longer feel black, i just feel like a person and i try not to look -- i don't meet color, i meet people and i don't forget where i've come from but i don't want to continue to live in thet past. i want to remember where i am today and i hope that when you read my story, you will understand where i'm coming from. i think that to say that my life has been easy, it hasn't and i don't take anything for granted. but i just feel it's time for me to live who i want to be today and as 66 year's old i'm going to live my life and not going to let anyone dictate to me how to live that life. i hope you as a reader will find your truth and live the dream. >> very good, very good. >> good afternoon, i'm sal salah abdeslam sally thomson. the death and wisdom that you all have gathered today has been such a fabulous day and i want to thank you so much. what martha is saying is so important and the stories that i have told in delta rainbow, thel irrepressible betty bobo pearson is a remarkable story. i grew up in california.phis. i move today memphis. i didn't know mississippi. i had wonderful mississippi relatives but and friends from mississippi but i never got to know mississippi until another friend of mine said i had just finished a second book and she said, what are you going tois write about, i don't know, well, you should write a book about betty bobo pearson. she is the most remarkable women i have ever known and i said, hmm, okay, well, let's do investigation and so we started going down to sumner and clarksdale and wea started talking to people who knew betty and betty now is living in california. they had one child and she is 94 year's old. i mean, it's just -- she is an amazing woman, but she's an amazing woman from the start. she is a seventh generation mississippian whose parentage had come into mississippi into the delta, established their plantations and had gone through and so she was of that class of plantation owners who grew up knowing that there was something -- she had incredible loyalty to her family but she had a sense of purpose that was different from a lot of people and, for instance, i will tell you one brief story, when she was in old miss, 1942 now, she was a senior in her philosophy class and had to write an essay about anything she wanted to write about and she wrote about why the schools of mississippi should bepi sho integrated. well, the professor was really very, very taken with this essay and he said, i submitted to the competition which would give you a full scholarship to a four-year graduate school in new york at colombia. he said, fine, that's okay. she went about her business and about six weeks later, he calleu her into his office and said, i betty, you've won the scholarship and she was estatic and borrowed a car to clarksdale and ran into her daddy yes, -- daddy 's office and said no daughter of mine is going to yankeeland . what are you saying, schemes and haulerred but she was so loyal to her family she decided that she could not defy her father. she wasn't going to defy her father and so so she turned down scholarship. she thought, i have to show my father that i'm a grown woman now, she went up to the marine recruiting office which had just opened, the marines decided that they would have a women's unit, reserve and she jane it had marines.jo [laughter] >> and then she drove home and said, daddy, i have joined the marines and she was delighted. anyway, she served her time in the marines and the next really remarkable part, she came home, married another mississippimissi planner and -- and which was just the plantation is delta plantation which was right outside of sumner and she attended the emmett trial and watched what was going on and it really changed her life and she became convinced that she had to do something to try to show the world that all mississippians didn't believe in segregation or didn't believe that all white mississippians white were the superior people and she went up to the reporters from new york times and look magazine and life magazine and london times and said, listen, we have a placece outside of sumner where all of her friends were ignoring, they were denying that the trial was even going on and they were just turning their backseat on thele whole thing and she was astounded so she asked these people, she wanted to show that everyone in mississippi wasn't this way so they came out and she entertained and got to know these people from the times and such and so that became a cause for her to continue, she became on the civil rights commission, she worked with her -- her home was open to all the freedom writers that were coming down and it's a remarkable story and she has gone on and just one incident to tell you that she just -- oh, i have to say this. part of what the problem was is she didn't believe in trying to convince people, she knew that k she could only do it through her action and so she joined the naacp and worked that way, but she lost many, many of her delta friends and most importantly it created this incredible skissisi in her family and to the point where -- she wanted her daughter to know her grandparents, she wanted to keep close to her family and so they just didn't talk about it.ut it was just one of those things that nearly broke her heart and it even got worse but that you have to read the book to find about that. [laughter] >> but she moved to california because that's where her daughter and family were living into the retirement. at the anal of 88 she became the president after three years of that retirement home and in the next two years after that she was nominated for the most outstanding for the state of california of -- in the retirement home, so anyway, she is one of those mississippi daughters that you should be proud of. >> very good. >> hi, i'm patricia boyett and i want to thank everybody foro organizing the mississippi book festival and i'm honored to be on this panel and i thank you for including.is i opened my book on january '66. they are on a mission from the imperil wizard of the white nights to murder daymer.rs, to - daymer was an upper-class african american who owned store, mills and so forth and he was a very powerful civil rights activist. he had been a former president of the forest county branch of naacp. he had been one of the lead plaintiffs in one of the most important right cases which is u.s. versus lynn. all of those things, of course, furated bowers. he had eight children, several of them at the time were away.y. many of his children served in the military. one was living in germany wait to go hear if he was going to go to vietnam. but three of his children were living at the home at the time and when the klansmen arrived, blew out the windows and goal was to kill all the occupants inside. when the special agent in charge of mississippi, roy moore, he was headquartered in jackson heard of the crime, he immediately dispatched an army of fbi agents -- what i call the central woods, the war on the klan had started at tend of the summer of '64 when they found the bodies of activists. it had actually -- there wasas very little federal intervention in pine woods. it had come and gone because the it was forest county had been very adept at making county that it was a modern county.. once the civil rights movement really got going in the this part of the area -- there was earlier efforts but wasn't really until '62 where it really exploded the the powers that be there, some of them were moderate, moderate is always a difficult word to fully define because it meant different things for different people. somewhat moderate in the sense that they were segregationist but opposed violence for moral reasons. some of them were segregationist but oppressed violence. the media stays, that forces the federal government to intervene and they we wanted to prevent that from happening so they actually orchestrated a plan to resist the civil rights movement with nonviolent massiveem resistance as much as they could. instead when you see a lot -- this is why the area got ignored for a long time, you were used to seeing things in delta where police would attack the protestors right in front of the media, they would allow mobs tot attack, they tried not to haveey that be done in seed of forest county. t what they did police freedom of movement, police would arrestt people that stepped out of a certain line. this is not to say that there wasn't violence because there was a lot of violence but this was after they were arrested and put the jail. what frustrated leaders was sam bow oersted had headquartered his klan right next door in jones county but had a pretty active klan in forest county and actually the person who hadounta ronan murdered came from jonesel county. it does have some really radical elements too. if you look at the case and go forward you would think forest county as a moderate case. sam bowers, he wasn't worried about it when they came to forest and jones county. he said to klansmen, no jury in mississippi will convict a white man for killing a black man. he had reason to believe that.t. a year after the passage of civil right -- the voting rights act of '65, long after brown versus board of '54. you had nominal desegregation. there's still so many case that is the fbi has not investigated. he had a reason to believe that he was safe, he could continue to do this. he had been indicted and many klansmen were indicted but they let them out, they let them out to go plan the murderer of daymer. there's a reason for sure that he thought but underestimated some changes that were going on and underestimated how devoted many of county officials were devote today keep federal government out and what they would do, how can we hold onto segregation and prosecute the case. i should always mention people are complicated, right, there's so many nuances that go on here. i've interviewed a lot of the local leaders and many of them talk about vernon daymer. they were progressives in the area that were heart-broken about the death. he would lend them the cotton picker. one biologist teacher broke down in his class and told students, this was a friend of mine and so that really mobilized forest county against the klan. it was also, you know, a lot of times counties could be xenophobic. this case does lead to great changes. it leads to marginalization of the klan. but in a way that also kind of buried this history of forest county and jones county because a lot of the locals tried to distance themselves from jones county, there was a newspaper article in the press releases and political speeches were, this came from jones county. jones county is radical and we are not like that but when i dug deep, jones and forest county were linked in a real brutal racial history. in fact, traces all the way to settle meant days. they had slavery there too. it was populated and a lot of progressive elements, there were people that had interracial relationships and that brings people together and families together. so you have all the nuances there but during reconstruction or turn of century where forest and jones counties become industrialized and commercialized hub of mississippi, you had some really -- all the forces came together. they needed labor and they needed black labor, they were trying to get sharecroppers to come and they are going to pay them five times as much so a lot of people are going to come to mississippi and then you have ao bigger population, you need commercial outlets because this is segregation, a lot of african americans can't get services they need because white doctors refuse today see them or white pharmacies and schools are segregated. after you have moderate progressive white that is will help bring in some of those industries, even segregation is going to help because they want a better segregation. african americans are going to capitalize on that and create black capitalism in the area.e so you have this whole progressive thing going on in the sense that you have a sturdy black working class coming in the area and a powerful black e meñing and when they try to protest it's only suicidal init the area. there were so many lynchings because you have african american that is had economic and black middle class and some upper class. it was hard to control economically. one paper called hattiesburg as the hub for lynchings and african americans tried to protest and there are so manyd stories like that but it was suicidal to try to do protest so what they focused on was black uplift. by the time in world war ii, when you have a shift that starts to happen, you have some in world war i but the shift begins in world war ii, we were talking about the gsh the government is talk about we areo talking about the freedoms of abroad but you're oppressing african americans at home andan lynching occurs in 1942 in the middle of this war. two lynchings actually. and the roosevelt ordered the fbi in there to investigate. t that's the first time it happened in mississippi since reconstruction. you have a moment of turning point there. and you already have this great foundation, african-american community that's ready to revolt when they get a chance. they start to build that up and build that up. they keep trying to do direct action but it's really difficult until '62. i trayed some cases, i trace a case in jones county. some of you might be familiar with the willy mcgee case. he was an african-american who charged with interracial rape of a white woman. some of you are familiar with james meredith who desegregated ole miss. and a lot of these cases end very tragically unfortunately. but even with things end tragically doesn't mean that you're not pushing forward. these are the civil rights soldiers that she mentioned and constantly pushing this forwardd and in '62 all the force gathered together and they start bringing in other forces and ina '64 they do freedom days to try to push voting rights and that gets massive publicity. so there's -- it does have a brutal racial history ofpl injustice but incredibleci inspiring hits -- history crusade and they culminate in the daymer case and i trace the roots throughout the different cases and struggles and then looks how the daymer casease chn changed. .. it ending in different times and places, and here it really goes to '74, and then it doesn't end. it's not like so we got some begs legislation, i mean, we're still fighting for civil rights today, right in so i look at the third part. the first part or the third part moves into the boardrooms a lot into the political battles, but it does go back on the streets in the '80s and '90s, so i look there. they started protesting police brutality long before the black lives matter movement in the '90s. so i take it up to 2010. sometimes i still wish i was with writing because so much is still going on right now. basically, the story traces people i consider heroes, and so in many ways it was sometimes really hard to write book, and i'm not going to cry. it's always so hard to talk about it. i cried last type i was speaking of it -- last time i was speaking of it. there's so much sacrifice, and inju >> but it is also inspiring of the people that stand up and fight for every right dinner so fighting for those rights today and i see it is one of the most in been tortured also transformative landscapes and america and it is racial ecology thatne continues to lead the nation but keep in fighting and we will get there.. [applause] >> speaking of violence -- [laughter] we have next a book on mccomb, mississippi, in the summer of 1964. this is a book up like the other panelists -- unlike the other panelists, i'm here to talk about a book that i did not write -- [laughter] it's a book that i wrote about. this book is by hying carter ii who many of you will remember as a very distinguished mississippi newspaperman. he edited the greenville delta democrat times for years, and i think that one can judge a newspaper by the enemies that it makes. .. >> it is a function almost as a branch of government. so i will start by saying this is not in carter's book, one of my intentions in taking on this project was to bring it back into print and help a new generation of mississippians and americans to appreciate the work that carter did. this book is part of a series that the university press of mississippi is launching, called civil rights mississippi. we will reprint a number of titles from the 1960s with new scholarly introductions. we hope that readers will appreciate them. we hope that students can use them in classrooms. i want to say a word about what a good job i think the university of mississippi or the university press of mississippi does. it is a fantastic resource for the state. a fantastic resource for scholars and scholarship. it deserves your support. [applause]. the story of the hefner's, albert hefner, called red by his friends, mary alva called alva, were respectable and respected macomb citizens in the summer of 1964. red was an insurance salesman, he won civic awards locally for his work in the community, his activism in the community. in the summer of 1964 macomb was the place, one of the places in mississippi that had substantial number of civil rights workers volunteered to attempt to register african-americans to vote. that is the catalyst for violence in macomb that summer. read hefner and his wife melva were like many respectable people in the cold, they were worried about the potential of violence in their community. they believe that it was bad for business. they believe that it was bad for the community. they wanted to understand what was happening in their town. they invited to civil rights workers, both of whom were white, to their home for conversation. immediately and to buy immediately i mean that evening, within an hour or two, they began receiving threatening telephone calls, harassing telephone calls that escalated. in a matter of six weeks the hefner's left's left the community and did not return. so carter's book published in 1965 is the story of how so quickly a very respected white couple could be driven from a community for simply asking questions about what was going on. they found that people they believe they knew, people they knew for years turned on them, ostracize them socially, struck at them economically, the lease that read hefner had on his office building was canceled. their dog was poisoned. they received something in the order of 300 telephone calls over a period of about five weeks warning them to leave town. eventually they did. so the story carter published in 65 takes the hefner family through the summer 64 into their exile for mississippi. many, many thousands of mississippians were exiled in those years. there exiled for actions that were more transgressive you might say that the hefner's. what makes their story worthy of the telling by carter and the republishing #carter, let me say for those of you who are listening and don't know mississippi geography, macomb is not in the delta where carter's newspaper was. however carter and the hefner's were both both episcopalians. there are active members of the episcopal church. so their faith was a connection. also, read hefner like carter was a man who enjoyed asking questions about the way things were, who was a brave man and i think there were personal elements of the hefner story that appealed to carter as well. as i said, we are bringing this book out in this new series, civil rights in mississippi. my role as a a historian of the civil rights movement was to try to say a few words about the story in its broader context. what struck me about the broader context of the story is, as i said the hefner's were exiled, many thousands of mississippians were exiled but the hefner's did not set out to try to make a stand on civil rights issues. they simply wanted to find out more information about what was going on in their hometown. they wanted to act potentially as a conduit of information between the civil rights workers and respectable elements in the town. they had been in the home they built in the new subdivision for ten years. they thought people in their church, the community, and business, new them and knew what they stood for but in an instant practically, in a matter of weeks literally they found those friends turning on them and shunning them for the work they did. their story says something about the bonds of community in a lot of the small, southern towns that saw the civil rights movement. the bonds of community to work and hold people together but they can also work to expel people were perceived to have broken the code that govern the bonds of those terms. so the hefner's story is one of the way that ostracism and economic pressure, and even threats of violence could silence people who would have been considered moderates or progressives. but who were not aware often of the dangers that asking questions would present in those years. i was born in macomb. one of the things i do not remember from growing up is it very much discussion of the hefner story in the 1970s and 1980s when i was a young fellow. so one of the things that struck me about the importance of the book is one of the functions of repression and retaliation is silencing. so with the hefner's left their story was largely lost in macomb. there are no memorials, there there are no signs, there have been no apologies, other than obituaries in the jackson newspapers, the deaths of the hefner's were not covered. they get treatment in histories of the civil rights movement in mississippi but nothing very expensive. again, i would say of all the of mississippians who were exiled in those years, why would the hefner story loom larger? i suppose my answer would be, so many thousands of stories just like the hefner's were similar to the hefner's have been lost to the silencing that occurred because of the pressures not to dissent in those years so i think one of the tasks that we have as a community and as it civil rights readers is to recover and remember the stories because they speak to some of the same limits that are definitions of community still present to us. definitions of we and they that still have roots that were formed in the jim crow. and we have not done a sufficient job in redefining as we have moved in other ways beyond those years. >> thank you. i just have a couple of questions before i turn it over to the audience. now i want to talk a little bit about, i remember reading about you being chosen in regards to desegregation of schools, talk about that please. >> in 1966 is when our schools got integrated. i woods might last year of high school and i had an idea what is going into. i thought i was just going to school. i thought school would be different it would just be another school. what i did not understand at the time was why nobody prepared us for what we're going into, they just said they wanted to send some black kids to the white school. i can't say that we really were integrated, we were still segregated because the black kids would sit on one side and the white kids would sit on another side. teachers. teachers didn't talk to us, they talked at us. so i do not think at that time that i felt like i integrated school until later in life. what am i trying to say? i guess we do not really, really integrate schools, not at all, not in my year. the kids were still separated, the white kids from the black kids. later in life i learned that the only way to integrate is for us to try and come together as people, not have somebody dictate to us what we should do and how we should do it. as people we should be the ones to come together and that is what i have strived for in my life. integrating, will i don't even think i integrate anymore, like i said before, i don't need color, i don't meet color, i meet people. people. we have to stop looking at people as black or white. we would have the need to integrate, we would be integrated. is that clear? >> very. ms. thompson. [applause]. in reading this wonderful book about betty bobo, talk to the audience about her finding her purpose in the train wreck that happened. >> this to me is one of the things that shows how people influence other people and you don't even realize what the consequences could be. when betty was 18 months old she, her mother was driving the car, her grandfather was on the front seat, her grandmother was on the backseat with betty. it it was one of those old-fashioned touring cars were it was all open. they stopped for a trade and they were coming back from a visit in florida and they stopped at a train stop in top weiler. the train was coming along on they thought there is a fellow on the caboose of the train that waited for her mother to go on across and then betty's mother started to cross and there is another train coming from the other direction. it smashed into the car that betty's mother was driving. it instantly killed her grandfather and betty was thrown out of the car onto the front of the engine of the train that was coming along. she went for about 100 yards and then rolled off of the little boy that saw the rack ran and took betty back to her mother who was just stunned and shocked. it was a horrible situation. betty doesn't remember that incident. but after her grandmother whose pelvis was broken i was taken up to the clinic in memphis and stayed there for about three months, came back to bobo where the family, several generations of the family were living. the. the grandmother realized that her husband had been killed and she begged for the little girl, betty to come down and live with her in her bedroom. so betty so betty moved downstairs to be in her grandmother's bedroom and every night, i think she stayed there till she was run five or six. every night her grandmother would tell her story, tucker, listen to her person and say, betty, you know that god saved you from that train wreck because you have a purpose in life. betty then had a very lovely childhood growing up on the plantation. which was, she had many black friends, they're playing together. it was just a good life. but until the emma tilt trial when she witnessed what the situation was, it was then that she realized what her purpose in life was. that was the thing about betty. she she lived that purpose and she really felt, as other people she found what she was supposed to do with her life like we're all supposed to do. but this is a very important thing. i think it shows what an individual can do because of what her grandmother did for betty. >> very good. >> how did this affect you in your life? >> when i first came across, just came across a couple of lines of the book about him when i was an undergrad and mississippi valley. i asked my professor about him and he give me a couple of other books. i don't know, something about a couple lines maybe because i was a sparse mention of him. this. this minutes advices life and i read all of the stuff and the more i learned about him and it change the course of my life. i was subletting my apartment in york and was way to go back there. i decided to go to the university of southern mississippi because i wanted to live in the town where this happened. i wanted to learn from the people and the culture there. the never thing i read about him it just seemed like he was most unselfish people i could read about. i know you could get into -- and idolize someone. but i can find anybody who said anything like a cruel word about him. he sacrificed so much for everybody. he worked all of the time. he had his kids work on the farm five of them went to go serve in the united states military. he was the person that every time he made a profit he shared it with someone else. he give it to the cut cursor someone to use. if he of someone was sick he would be the first person there. he did not have to make those sacrifices. he he could have let other people and a lot of people would in that situation. you have have kids, wife, i'm not in a position to the myself out there, but he did. again, again, and again. ultimately he was murdered for that. so it is always hard for me to say that without getting really sad. >> mr. brown, curiosity, you talked about that and those people be in being exiled, talk a little bit more about that please. what were they curious about? this overwrites, what in regard to the civil rights movement? >> without retelling the story of freedom summer, no one in mississippi in 1964 who read the newspapers could miss the idea that something very significant was happening that summer. if you read the jackson newspapers were told that there was an invasion coming to the state. people in macomb were prepared, in several senses they knew that several civil rights workers were coming to the town and some were prepared for violence against those civil rights workers. there have been civil rights activism in macomb for years, there were black businessmen, cc brian to notably and other people in the community who had been working for black political and economic advancement and rights. more recently in 1961, robert moses had attempted civil rights work in macomb, he was rebuffed violently then. i think that was a legacy that some him macomb remember as i think they were white macomb residents who believe that if they could be driven away once they could be driven away again. so, again this was a history, this was material that people in the community would have known and as a businessman, as a person person who was invested in the success of the community, read hefner wanted for macomb to work. he wanted for macomb to be one of the places that was not torn apart to the point of economic dysfunction by civil rights activism. so he wanted to find out from people on the ground what was going to happen. he believed that he could, he spoke with the chief of police before he had the civil rights workers in his home. he told the man that he considered to be his friend and told him what he was going to do. afterwards, the police chief denied enough of the conversation to make people believe that that conversation had not happened. so the family has i said, they did not see themselves as progressive, they do not see themselves as crusaders, they did not see themselves as getting involved with that work, but simply asking questions and appearing to dissent was in that context enough to destroy relationships, friendships, and economic livelihood of the family. >> thank you. do we have any questions? if so, please come to the podium. just a reminder i have heard a couple of phones so please make sure those are off. >> i have a question. >> this question is for doctor nonoaud. i want want to thank you for writing this book. the murder was something that was very influential in my thinking about civil rights. i was a teenager when it happened. i know most of the people wrote about in your book in fact i saw just a few months ago and they're doing very well. my question is this in hattiesburg where i live, this story is frequently told that if stan byers had known that he lived in force county he might not have ordered that murder. he thought that bowers lived in jones county. he knew that he would never prosecute. is that something that you came across, is that a credible story? >> i'm not sure. the force county, now by last name of hamilton was one who asked bowers originally because he cannot order it. only sam bowers could order the killing. he was in the county. i think a lot of that developed out of this idea that sort of the myths that came out of the story where they wanted to shove everything over to jones county. jones county was going through a lot of its own shifts. i guess may be more likely they would have been able to get off in jones county. you had some prosecutors coming up in jones county at the time who is really against the clan. so i'm not sure that is actually a credible story. i'm pretty sure he knew that he lived in force county. when you would rick west from the wizard to do something, it had had to be from the county that you are from. i think you were trying to say this is in jones county this would not happen in forest county. forest county to me it is fascinating and hard to describe a place in five minutes. there is a lot of nuances. there was a lot of progressive there. there were moderates there. one thing i did not mention is that the county prosecutor, james duke, his brother james duke, his brother was an fbi agent. there far more cooperation between the federal and state, federal and local authorities there. to my knowledge they never found anything in force county where you had heavy involvement of law-enforcement in the clan. i interviewed mr. dukes, james duke that is, and he told me that killing devastated him and he was determined to have sieges. he he was also very much is segregationist at the time. that is why people are so complex. they could could be really against violence but for segregation. but i think the killing changed a lot of people. right after that dukes prosecutes and gets a conviction of a white man for raping an african-american teenager. those were hard convictions to get. so force county is a very complex place with complex people there. it was not all radical or progressive. there is all that mix kind of fighting in the county. >> we have just one more question. >> the panelists will be able to talk to any of you afterwards. >> good afternoon. my question is to -- i wanted to hear a little more about your life experiences after you met your true soulmate and you began a new. >> in 1973i went to work at a store, it used to be here in jackson, deal supermarket. my supermarket. my husband was involved with civil rights much more in-depth than i was. he came to came to mississippi to work in the voter registration. the same as the three civil right workers that got killed. he came for that reason. i met this man in 1973. they built a new deal in fayette and i did not know this man was my boss. so i had gotten a job there, he he was not there when i first got there. and he had long red hair. i thought he must be one of those freakish people they sent here to help us out. he came in and he walked up to me and he said, hi, my name is joe. why never had too much conversation with white people so i said so, i'm stupid but it popped out and i could do anything about it. but he continued to try to talk to me and he would always have something nice to say to me. i just did not understand why this man was being so nice to me, why. and finally he asked me one day, he said can i take you to lunch. and i said no, i'm mary. he said well i didn't ask you to marry me, ask ask you to go to lunch. but i was separated from a previous husband at that time. we just struck up a friendship and it didn't take very long for me to know that this man was my soulmate. i have been been married to him for 42 years. [applause]. >> how wonderful is that. this has been a phenomenal phenomenal panel. let's give the panelist another hand. >> will will end up with the same that it takes a mighty courage to be in this place. it takes a a mighty courage living in mississippi. it takes a mighty courage 2016, and 16, and we thank you so much. [applause].

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