This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX.

I'm Katherine Burns.

One funny thing about storytelling is that you're almost always talking about

the past, even if you're the past just happened a few minutes ago. Sometimes someone will be

telling a story about a harrowing life or death incident, and there's a built-in spoiler alert,

since the fact that they're here to tell the story means that they survived. The stories in this

episode are all told by people who've been

forced to confront the past, or in the case of our first story, confront our country's past.

The story concerns the 1963 assassination of civil rights activists Medgar Evers. It was told

way back in 2008 in New York City, where we partner with the public radio station WNYC.

Jerry Mitchell is a bit of a modern day Avenger, and we are so thrilled to have him tell a story for us.

Here's Jerry, live at the Moth.

I'm standing on the front porch facing Byron D. Lebeckwith, the notorious Klansman who killed Meg Grevers.

He wasn't caught doing that, but he was caught trying to plant a ticking time bomb outside a Jewish leader's home in New Orleans. You see, my stories are the ones that got the case reopened against him, as well as other clansmen. But he hadn't figured that out, or at least I thought so. My wife was eight months pregnant at the time. She begged me not to go visit him.

It's a trap.

I have to go.

I don't want to raise the children by myself.

I have to go.

If you go, I'll never forgive you.

Karen, I have to go

Beckwith made me answer all these questions before he'd ever let me come to his house

where'd you grow up what are your parents names where do they Where do you live? Where do you go to church?

...