Portrait of a true hero

I listen to a fair number of podcasts, and one of the ones I listen to is The Moth podcast, which is a short segment of a person telling the story of a significant event in their life, ranging from near-death experiences to, well, trying to seduce Chip of Chip & Dale fame at Disney World. Last week, they played a story of Jerry Mitchell, who's a writer for the Clarion-Ledger, a paper based in Jackson, Mississippi.

Mitchell really is an unsung hero, I realised, after hearing his story and reading more about him. See, Mitchell, after watching the movie Mississippi Burning, was inspired to begin looking into cases of black people who had been killed by old KKK leaders and members, but for whose murders nobody was ever charged. His efforts have led to the direct arrest and conviction of four Klansmen, and him and his family have been threatened more than once (his wife was in her third trimester at this point as well, which makes his actions extra brave). According to him, when Beckwith, the first Klansmen against whom he got a case successfully opened, talked to him after figuring out it was Mitchell's journalism that had reopened the cold case, told Mitchell that he was a reckless driver and was likely to have an accident.

I really can't tell you much more about Mitchell that'll do him justice, so I'll just leave you with this link to his biography in the Clarion-Ledger

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/99999999/SPECIAL17/60416008/

If I ever end up being half the man that Mitchell is, I'll consider that a success.