Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America's Civil Rights Century

Lying just south of Neshoba County, where three civil rights workers were murdered during Freedom Summer, Clarke County lay squarely in Mississippi's — and America's — meanest corner. Even at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, when the clarion call for equality and justice echoed around the country, few volunteers ventured there. Fewer still remained. Local African Americans knew why the movement had taken so long to reach them. Some spoke of a bottomless pit in the snaki...