WILMINGTON — Author and journalist Jerry Mitchell, author of “Race Against Time,” will hold an interactive webinar Tuesday, April 12 for Clinton County Reads at the Murphy Theatre in Wilmington as the culminating event for the community reading program.
Doors will open at the Murphy at 5:30 p.m. with free refreshments and cash bar; the program with Mitchell will begin at 6:30 p.m. It is also available virtually via this link: https://bit.ly/ccreadsfinale2022 .
Mitchell’s investigative reporting and sustained coverage for the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, brought four Ku Klux Klan members to justice for the murders of Medgar Evers, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Vernon Dahmer, and the four young girls killed in a 1963 Birmingham church bombing.
Mitchell chronicled each murder, from cold case to conviction, in “Race Against Time,” the story of Mitchell’s quest to uncover enough evidence to persuade state prosecutors in Mississippi and Alabama to reopen four of the most infamous killings from the days of the civil rights movement, decades after the fact.
“Mitchell pursued these stories after most people believed they belonged to history, and not to journalism,” said late Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam, who was a member of the committee that selected Jerry Mitchell for a Chancellor’s Award at Columbia University. “But they did belong to journalism, because the truth had never been told and justice had never been done. As each of the guilty convictions was finally handed down, it has been news of the highest order, and Jerry was there still covering the story.”
The Christian Science Monitor wrote, “‘Race Against Time’ provides the pleasures of both a detective novel and a courtroom drama. As Mitchell recounts how he sifted through court records, reread FBI files, and got suspects to talk, we get the thrill of watching an old-fashioned investigative reporter at the top of his game. And at trial after trial, we see prosecutors relentlessly establish the guilt of men who had gone unpunished.”
Copies of the 2022 Clinton County Reads book choice, “Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era,” are available at the event’s sponsoring locations: the Blanchester Public Library, the Sabina Public Library and its New Vienna branch, the Wilmington Public Library and its Clinton-Massie branch, and locally owned booksnmore.org.
Books ’N’ More has paperback copies with available autographed nameplates for $12 by visiting its website, calling 937-382-7323, or emailing [email protected] .
