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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 \u201cFreedom Summer\u201d of 1964. \xa0James 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\xa0"Simon Wiesenthal." \xa0In 2009, he received a "genius grant" from the\xa0MacArthur Foundation.

Author John Grisham wrote of Mr. Mitchell: \u201cFor 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, \u201cRace Against Time,\u201d is his amazing story. Thanks to him, and to courageous prosecutors, witnesses, and FBI agents, justice finally prevailed.\u201d

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

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