“To the One who loves justice.”
That’s the simple dedication at the start of investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell’s long-awaited memoir, “Race Against Time,” which hits bookstores Tuesday.
It reflects the deep Christian faith of the veteran Mississippi journalist, whose stories helped put four Klansmen and a serial killer behind bars.
“God loves justice,” Mitchell, 60, told me in a telephone interview.
Mitchell, a 1982 journalism graduate of Harding University in Searcy, Ark., worked for The Clarion-Ledger newspaper in Jackson, Miss., for 33 years. He left in 2018 to found the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit watchdog news organization.
Although Mitchell’s book is written in first person, he stressed that it’s not about him. (Nonetheless, at least one reviewer suggests that readers might conclude, rightly, that he is a “hero.”)
“It’s really about these families, about the journey to justice and what all took place,” Mitchell said. “To me, the larger story is what’s important.”
What is that larger story?
Bestselling author John Grisham put it this way in endorsing the book, published by Simon & Schuster:
“For almost two decades, (Mitchell) doggedly pursued the Klansmen responsible for some of the most notorious murders of the civil rights movement. This book is his amazing story. Thanks to him, and to courageous prosecutors, witnesses, and FBI agents, justice finally prevailed.”
That justice included the June 21, 2005, conviction of reputed Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen in the “Mississippi Burning” killings of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.
The Killen verdict was returned on the 41st anniversary of the June 21, 1964, slayings. Only a God who loves justice could have arranged that timing, Mitchell told me in a 2005 interview in Jackson.
“God’s timing is not man’s timing; it never is,” said the journalist, a longtime member of the Skyway Hills Church of Christ in Pearl, Miss.
Back then, he had taped Jeremiah 32:27 to his Clarion-Ledger computer: “I am the Lord the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?”
In our more recent discussion, Mitchell emphasized that justice is about more than what happens in a courtroom.
“It’s about how we treat one another, how we treat the least of these,” he said, a reference to Jesus’ words in Matthew 25. “So, I think my faith and what I do as a profession go hand in hand.”
I’ve read the first few chapters of “Race Against Time.” So far, it’s every bit as compelling as a fictional Grisham novel. Except that it’s the truth.
I can’t wait to finish the rest.
Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads
1. Ignoring Kobe Bryant's Catholic faith results in incomplete look at his life: Religion Unplugged’s own Clemente Lisi explores the religion angle in this week’s biggest news story: the California helicopter crash that claimed the lives of Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven others. The retired Los Angeles Lakers star attended Catholic Mass regularly, including two hours before his death. After facing a 2003 rape charge, Lisi notes, Bryant drew closer to his faith and became a better husband, man and father. (Related: Religion News Service’s Alejandra Molina wrote a nice feature, tied to Bryant’s death, on the Lakers’ chaplain.)
Continue reading “A journalist's faith: New memoir tells how justice prevailed n Civil Rights Era murders,” by Bobby Ross Jr.
https://religionunplugged.com/news/2020/1/1/jerry-mitchell-civil-rights-race-against-time-journalism