On a Saturday in early March, roughly 30 middle and high school students loaded on to a large passenger bus in Central Florida.

It may be the weekend with no school, but these kids, some of their families are on this bus to learn.

In your books, do you want to change our stories in your book? Tell us what happened there.

They are on the Teach the Truth tour, two full days of traveling across the state, visiting sites important to Florida's history through black eyes.

The man leading the tour is Dr. Marvin Dunn, a retired professor who has made his mission to make sure this history is known, how black people in Florida lived and died in the face of white supremacist violence.

Right now, he's telling the students about where they're headed next to the grave of Willie James Howard, a black boy killed by white vigilantes who were never brought to justice.

Willie James is a 50-year-old black boy living in Lava, Florida in 1944. During Christmas vacation, he was allowed to work at a five-and-dime store downtown Lava. That was unusual.

Black boys used to work outside cleaning up, but Willie James was smart and some fast-talker, a great singer.

Dr. Dunn has spent decades uncovering and documenting these tragedies. The students are carrying with them his book, Florida through black eyes.

Willie James fell in love with a white girl named Sofia Goss, who also worked in that store. She was a high school beauty queen. She wrote her a letter telling her, you know how you're doing? I like you, you like me, you don't like me, don't tell me.

Dr. Dunn says the boy's letter ended up in the hands of the girl's father, who, along with two other white men, took Willie James and his father into their car at gunpoint.

From downtown Lava where this started, he drive out to the Swansea River to a place called Sultis Springs. That's where we're going, it's afternoon.

On the way to the river they tie up Willie James's hands and feet. Mr. Goss gets that. When they get to the river, they get out of the car and go up, this is pistol to Willie James's head.

He tells them to jump or take us in this barrel. So Willie James takes out his little wallet, some say I don't look by, but first, he gives that to his dad who's about to watch his son die.

And his father says, well, some of them are led with the church and Willie James jumps into the Swansea River and drowns.

The men responsible were never charged with the crime. They claim that Willie jumped to escape a beating and that his own father wouldn't save him.

For decades, his death was considered a suicide.

Once we go to the cemetery, they move back to the Swansea River.

The bus arrives in Live Oak, Willie James's hometown. Dr. Dunn leads the students into an old cemetery.

It's green and open, surrounded by mighty oaks covered in Spanish moss.

Willie James is buried here, but for 60 years, his body lay in an unmarked grave until a new owner of the funeral home, Douglas Udel senior, found a book belonging to a black mortician.

The book said Willie James was buried in this plot and that his cause of death had been lynching.

...