(Seated left to right) Diane McWhorter, Karl Fleming, Gene Edwards, and Jerry Mitchell.

"I was just horrified that these guys had gotten away with murder." For Jerry Mitchell, seeing the movie Mississippi Burning was the beginning of his education on the Civil Rights Movement. His investigative reporting into the crimes of a previous generation has led to new trials and eight convictions in Mississippi , all since 1994. "It's your job as a reporter to go out there and expose the truth," he says of his work.

 

When Civil Rights Investigative Reporters gather at the Writers roundtable, the talk is intense. As the Deep South Bureau Chief for Newsweek , Karl Fleming was on the scene for every major civil rights event in the early sixties. "I used to literally go back to my motel room at night and throw up. I was just so ashamed," he says of the horrors he witnessed.

 

Diane McWhorter, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her investigative memoir, grew up in Birmingham . At the time the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was bombed, she was the same age as the victims. "For me to be able to talk to African Americans about race was one of the most powerful experiences I've ever had." She continues, "So much opens up."

 

Writers of different ages and eras and styles, all three agree that it's never too late to do the right thing as they relate their reporting experiences to host Gene Edwards. Karl Fleming says that there are "unbelievable changes that have taken place in this state as a result of what happened in the sixties."

 

Survivors of those turbulent times agree. In a sidebar, Myrlie Evers Williams, widow of slain leader Medgar Evers, comments that "the state that Medgar envisioned, the nation that Medgar envisioned, it's on it's way." But people who were with the three civil rights workers who were slain in Neshoba County and survivors from Birmingham also recognize that we have more progress to make.

 

"We were a band of brothers and sisters who, who feel like we have been engaged in something that's almost a calling and a noble calling," concludes Fleming of his career. "Boy do I feel blessed to have had the life I had. Just about the luckiest guy in the world."

McWhorter and Mitchell agree.