Leading investigative reporting team at Mississippi Today. Stories helped put 4 KKK members & serial killer behind bars. Author, Race Against Time.
Jerry Mitchell
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#OnThisDay in 1963, NAACP leader Medgar Evers was killed outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi. In 1994, the assassin was finally sent to prison, where he died years later.
mississippitoday.org/2025/06/12/1...
#OnThisDay in 1963, #JFK delivered his first civil rights speech. Hours earlier, Alabama Gov. George Wallace tried to block the enrollment of 2 Black students at the University of Alabama.
mississippitoday.org/2025/06/11/1...
#OnThisDay in 1875, Peter Crosby, a Black sheriff, was shot in the head in the wake of the Vicksburg Massacre in which armed White Leagues overthrew the Reconstruction government in Mississippi, killing as many as 300 Black Americans they regarded as a threat.
mississippitoday.org/2023/06/07/1...
#onthisday in 1953, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation in restaurants in Washington, D.C., was unlawful. Civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell, who led the fight, returned to the restaurant that had turned her away and ate with her friends.
mississippitoday.org/2025/06/08/1...
#OnThisDay in 1963, Fannie Lou Hamer and other activists were arrested when they rode in the “white” section of a Greyhound bus & sat at the “whites-only” lunch counter in Winona, Mississippi. Inside the jail, they were beaten and tortured.
mississippitoday.org/2025/06/09/1...
#OnThisDay in 1963, Cleve McDowell became 1st Black student at Ole Miss law school, rooming w/ James Meredith. But university officials expelled him after they caught him with a pistol for self-protection. McDowell became field secretary for Mississippi NAACP.
mississippitoday.org/2025/06/05/1...
#OnThisDay in 1966, Klansmen killed Ben Chester White in hopes of luring #MLK to Natchez, Mississippi, to assassinate him. They were caught & went punished until 2003, when the last surviving Klansman was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, where he died.
mississippitoday.org/2025/06/10/1...
#OnThisDay in 1966, James Meredith was shot a day after he began his 220-mile March Against Fear across Mississippi. Meredith survived & the sniper was arrested. #MLK & other civil rights leaders helped finish the march to encourage Black Mississippians to vote.
mississippitoday.org/2025/06/06/1...
James Meredith believes his 1966 March Against Fear was more important than becoming the 1st Black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. A program commemorating that event is set for 2 today at Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center in Jackson. mississippitoday.org/2026/06/03/j...
Tameshia Shelton will finally get what she said she’s been praying for — another day in court to try to prove her innocence. The Mississippi Supreme Court declined to disturb the December decision by the state Court of Appeals ordering a new trial for Shelton.
mississippitoday.org/2026/06/04/s...
