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

I'm Al Letson.

With me today, my colleague Alexis Hightower, and together, we're going to tell you a story that starts in 1944 in Tri-on, North Carolina.

11-year-old Eunice Kathleen Wayman sits on a bench.

She's so small, preparing to play the piano to the big audience watching in the town hall.

It's a big deal in a town-like tri-on that a classical piano prodigy lives among them, well, not really among the white people, but still.

Her parents are the only black people allowed in the audience. They're sitting in the front

row. Before she can touch the keys, she senses something wrong. She looks out into the audience and

sees a white couple trying to take her parents' seats.

This was the way of life in Tryon, and little black girls should know their place.

But not Eunice. She turns to the crowd and says she won't play unless her parents can stay in their seats.

Annoyed, the white couple finds some seats in the back,

and Eunice sits at the bench and plays.

Someone comments,

Charming girl, but what nerve?

They have no idea.

Three years later, and several states over, Medgar Wally Evers and his brother Charles

stand on the steps of the courthouse in Decatur, Mississippi.

They're staring down a group of 20 or so white men with rifles, shotguns, and pistols.

The mob is blocking their way to the voting booth, and Megger has known this feeling before,

when the air crackles with the threat of violence. He's been to war fighting against the Nazis

in Europe, but he stands there, watching the white men blocking his way.

...