American Reckoning: shining a light on civil rights-era cold cases

‘They’re not going to get anybody in jail for these crimes but I think it can be a way to talk about what is justice.’ Photograph: Amistad Research Center

First we see him leaning against a wall, arms folded, a working man with pen and paper tucked into the breast pocket of his checked shirt. Then he is kneeling, removing his cap, one hand resting on a Bible as he raises the other and swears a solemn oath.

This is Wharlest Jackson, long dead and long denied justice, but preserved forever on film at the moment he takes a stand against the Ku Klux Klan. Not long after joining a Black armed resistance group in Natchez, Mississippi, the 37-year-old will be murdered with impunity.