From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal.

I'm Al Edson.

As a kid, growing up in a close-neck community can feel like there is magic in the air.

Every morning is filled with possibility

because at some point in the day,

you and your friends are going to get into something,

waving to your neighbors you've known most your life,

playing till the street lights come on,

for better or for worse, everybody knows your name.

For Lawrence Blackman, that place was Canton, Mississippi.

I loved it for the most part.

I thought that Canton was a very unique place.

Most of the people here know each other, families know each other.

We go to church together, go to school together.

And so I just,

I really enjoyed the level of connectedness that we had and shared as a community.

Canton is the seat of Madison County, one of the wealthiest areas in Mississippi. But Canton,

a mostly black town, doesn't share in that wealth. Lauren says as kids, he didn't really notice it. It wasn't until he went away for college and he got to see other

places that he began to understand that his hometown had problems. For decades, the sheriff's

department had been accused of terrorizing the

black community, from beating black activists in the 1960s to stopping and searching

black drivers and pedestrians.

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