Abstract
If you want to be a good writer, first you need to be a good reporter.
For nearly four decades I have touted this message in one form or another. As a news reporter and editor and longer as a journalism educator, I have witnessed the truth of these words: “Good writing comes from good reporting.”
Investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell proves the point once more in his inspiring Race Against Time.
Mitchell, who spent more than three decades at The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, devoted much of his career to finding justice for slain soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement and innocent victims of racial hatred. Race Against Time documents that career and the reporting process that led Mitchell to uncover the truths that prompted the convictions of four Klansmen and a serial killer decades after their crimes.
And here is the value for any student of journalism who wants to excel at telling stories that matter. In retracing his efforts, Mitchell reveals the reporting practices and many of the principles needed to uncover wrongdoing and right sins of the past.
Curiosity, persistence, tenacity, a sense of moral outrage when a broken system fails those unable to seek justice are essential. Add to that a willingness to do the hard work of digging for secret documents, following countless leads to locate long-forgotten witnesses and suspects and persuading even the killers themselves to talk.
The book is fast-paced, drawing readers into the Civil Rights era with scene-setting worthy of a Hollywood script and reporting insights drawn from countless interviews and source relationships that would be built over decades of reporting.
Divided into five parts, readers will watch as Mitchell re-opens the cold-cases of Civil Rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner; the assassination of voting activist Medgar Evers; the firebombing death of Vernon Dahmer, Sr.; and the church bombing that killed four Black girls and grievously injured a fifth. And, in telling each story, Mitchell shares the reporting process that led to discovery.
Mitchell did not begin his career as an award-winning investigative journalist. Nor did he become a journalist to solve long-ago murders. He cut his teeth as a rookie reporter covering the court beat. He learned early the importance of seizing chances, as he shares his encounter with a lead FBI investigator during a premiere of Mississippi Burning, the 1988 movie showcasing the murder of three Civil Rights workers in 1964. Sitting in the darkened theater, Mitchell, who had volunteered to cover the opening, listens as retired special agent Roy K. Moore provides running commentary on the movie’s flaws and success in portraying events he had lived.
When the lights went up, Mitchell had a source. He didn’t stop there. In seeking response to the movie from the Mississippi governor, he spoke to a press secretary. The press secretary, himself a former journalist, had his own question. Had Mitchell ever thought about revisiting the real case? Their exchange went like this: “You know it’s not too late . . .” “I didn’t know that. How can you –?” “I thought you were a court reporter.” “I am.” “Aren’t you forgetting something?” “What’s that?” “There is no statute of limitations for murder.”
And so, it began. A meeting in a movie theater, an extra phone call and a reporter’s curiosity changed everything.
Through each section of Race Against Time, Mitchell details the thrill of the chase: the digging, the search for sources, the clues found and followed, the questions asked, answered and asked again. Mitchell also shares the frustrations of dead ends and unsympathetic editors and the dangers of poking into dark corners.
While Mitchell’s Race Against Time was truly just that—decades had marred memories, witnesses and suspects had died, court records and evidence lost—his work demonstrates that investigative reporting is a marathon. There is no substitute for the skills and mind-set that push past nights, weeks, months and sometimes years of effort. Even in the face of personal risk.
Over the decades, Mitchell’s work resulted in justice for the families whose sons, brothers, fathers, daughters and sisters were murdered. But without the reporting, there would have been no ending to the story.
Race Against Time reveals the reporting process that allows good reporters to become good writers whose work changes the world.