Summary

In 1970 in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, thirty years after Ida Mae and her family left the cotton fields behind, nothing much had changed. The farmer that Ida Mae and George worked for had died. The man who had hunted down Joe Lee that night now operated a thousand-acre farm. The land was still mostly devoted to cotton but the work was down by combines and modern farm implements. The community was sparsely populated and resistant to change. Even Brown v. The Board of Education a Supreme Court ruling in 1954 that made segregated schools illegal did not compel most schools in the South to comply. The state funneled federal funds targeted for public schools to private white schools. It would take fifteen years before there would be full compliance. Marches and protests and court rulings did not change southern hearts.

In Lake County...