Saturday, June 27, 2009

Jackson, MS - Jerry Mitchell

Jerry Mitchell, to me, was our most amazing speaker thus far. His work with capturing klansmen that murdered and tortured black Civil Rights leaders is inspirational. He explained to us the lengths he went in order to give the killers justice such as Byron LaBeckwith. His passion for the movement was amazing and his work was even put into a movie, The Ghost of Mississippi. Jerry Mitchell's funny personality and easy going attitude made him an exceptional speaker to all students. He even shared with us that he gets death threats often and the FBI is currently investigating them and who is responsible. He resides in Jackson, Mississippi and works for the Clarion Ledger.

Annie


Jerry Mitchell was an excellent speaker. I love his sense of Humor! The fact that he is working to finish closed cases shows a lot of determination. It sort of inspires me to start my career in his field of study. Also finding out that he has had numerous death threats and still has continued to move along and hasn't let it effect him shows a lot of courage!! To me he has no fear what so ever and is a great story teller. when telling us his stories i felt like i was there at the actual event. I really appreciate everything he shared with us.

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On june 26th 2009 we met jerry mitchell. Jerry Mitchell is a white man that lived in jackson mississippi as a writer. He wrote several stories about blacks and the segregation they went threw in the 1950s. He talked to us about the things these white men did to colored people. He told us how he investigated these cases and the interviews he had with several of them. One that stood out the most was when this white man came into the courtroom acting as if he was to old to even go to jail so the judge released him because it looked like the man can do no "harm". That week Jerry got a picture of him standing up completely straight playing golf and put it on the front cover of his newspaper. By him doing that he put that man into jail and had him tell several man that were involved with all these crimes! the reason why i wanted to write about Jerry Mitchell was because this was a white man that was helping out the blacks by exposing how these white did the blacks not by marching on washington or boycotting he was helping them fight for there rights by bringing down the racist people that were hurting others.

-Eleni

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