Jerry MitchellThe Arizona Newspaper Association held its annual fall convention last week in Scottsdale. The Tribune was honored Saturday as the Newspaper of the Year for the fourth consecutive time. But another moment earlier in day was particularly inspiring to me. Investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell of the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., spoke about a nearly 20-year career devoted to revisiting unsolved murders from the civil rights era of the 1960s.Mitchell spoke at a Saturday luncheon during which he received the ANA’s Zenger Freedom of the Press award. Past notables to also receive this honor include UPI reporter/columnist Helen Thomas, CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite and investigative reporter Seymour Hersh.Mitchell is best known outside of his home state as the newspaper reporter in "Ghosts of Mississippi." This excellent movie starring Whoopi Goldberg provides a dramatic account of how the murder case against white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith was reopened more than 30 years after NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers was shot in the back outside his home.Mitchell says he was motivated to start looking into old shootings, lynchings and bombings after watching an earlier fictional movie, "Mississippi Burning." He received a tip about secret state records showing ties between police and Ku Klux Klan types that would provide a partial explanation as to why many of the murders of civil rights activists in the South never were solved.Along with de la Beckwith, Mitchell’s stories also led to the 1988 conviction of Sam Bowers for the murder of a voting rights activist and the 2002 conviction of Bobby Cherry for the bombing of a Alabama church that killed four children. In the second incident, Cherry had maintained his innocence for decades by claiming he was home watching wrestling on TV. Mitchell was able to prove no such program was broadcast in the area on the day of the bombing."In every one of these cases, the killers (had) walked free even though everyone knew they were guilty," Mitchell said Saturday.Mitchell speaks in the same lyrical and haunting tone that you can find in his most compelling stories. He talks with quiet passion about spending hours interviewing people such as de la Beckwith; racists whom Mitchell openly describes as "evil" but whose points of view were equally important to provide an objective accounting of the past and the present.As Mitchell continued to expose political and cultural corruption that had protected those who used violence and murder against the civil rights movement, he was asked to write about his newspaper’s own racist past. Mitchell said the Clarion-Ledger had been one of the South’s leading apologists for white supremacist attitudes during the 1960s. As an example, on the day after Martin Luther King gave his "I have a dream" speech, the newspaper’s headline about the civil rights march read, "Trash taken out in Washington." Death threats against Mitchell and his family have been a constant part of his life, and his newspaper has faced a lot of pressure over the years to leave the past alone. But Mitchell said no reporter worthy of the title should turn a blind eye to injustice."Good journalism doesn’t wait on public opinion to change history," he said.While Mitchell has received plenty of journalism awards, his real legacy will be the return of integrity to the Mississippi justice system and elsewhere. A total of 28 people have been arrested, and 23 convicted, because of Mitchell’s work. Six other states and the Justice Department have now reopened more than 100 other cases from that era.

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