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American Reckoning 1x84

Emmett Till, James Chaney, Medgar Evers, and four little girls from Birmingham—these are the stories we know. But the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act lifted the veil on many more victims of racially motivated violence for whom there still has been no justice. The federal legislation mandated that the Justice Department and the FBI investigate and, when possible, prosecute unsolved civil-rights-era murders, and it gave families new hope after years of disappointment. But since the Act was passed, the Justice Department has made no new indictments, and has closed the majority of cases of 151 known victims, leaving open wounds, and perpetuating a sense of injustice. In partnership with Retro Report and WNET’s Chasing the Dream, American Reckoning is the story of one of those cases, the killing of NAACP leader Wharlest Jackson in Natchez, Mississippi in 1967, a family’s search for answers, and the history and limits of a federal effort to right wrongs in our country’s past.