Mississippi Goddam Chapter 2: The Aftermath
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8.7K Ratings
🗓️ 23 October 2021
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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On the morning of Billey Joe Johnson’s death, crime scene tape separates the Johnsons from their son’s body. Their shaky faith in the criminal justice system begins to buckle.
As Billey Joe Johnson’s family tries to get answers about his death, they get increasingly frustrated with the investigation. They feel that law enforcement, from the lead investigator to the district attorney, are keeping them out of the loop. While a majority White grand jury rules that Johnson’s’s death was accidental, members of the family believe the possibility of foul play was never properly investigated.
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| 0:00.0 | From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. |
| 0:08.8 | I'm Al Lezen. And it's May 1970. |
| 0:13.2 | Tension blankets the country like a fog. |
| 0:16.4 | The racial justice movements, women's rights, and peace protests against the Vietnam War, |
| 0:20.9 | well, it's all coming to a head. |
| 0:23.6 | And then Kent State. |
| 0:26.8 | Leave this area immediately. |
| 0:31.5 | Four people lose their lives and nine are injured. |
| 0:34.8 | The consequences have never justified. |
| 0:37.3 | On May 4th, the National Guard shoot at |
| 0:40.4 | anti-war protesters on Kent State's campus, killing four and wounding nine students. College campuses |
| 0:48.0 | across the country explode with calls for justice. At the historically black college, Jackson State, and Mississippi, students are fed up. |
| 0:57.4 | Not just with the war and the violence at Kent State, but with years of dealing with |
| 1:02.3 | racists driving through the middle of campus. |
| 1:05.7 | Cars used to come through there quite often. |
| 1:09.1 | And the white citizens used to come through, |
| 1:11.7 | and sometimes they would hollow out or scream out of amenities |
| 1:15.5 | and throw eggs and, you know, bottles and bricks or what have you know, |
| 1:21.8 | using the N-word. |
| 1:23.4 | That's James Lap Baker. |
| 1:25.2 | He was a student at Jackson State in 1970. |
| 1:28.1 | On May 14th, just 10 days after Kent State, students in Jackson lash out. |
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