Using in-depth interviews with participants and residents, Watson brilliantly captures the tottering legacy of Jim Crow in Mississippi, while vividly portraying: the chaos that brought such national figures as Martin Luther King Jr. and Pete Seeger to the state, the courageous black citizens and Northern volunteers who refused to be intimidated in their struggle for justice, and the white Mississippians who would kill to protect a dying way of life....

A detailed history of the attempt in 1964 to register African-Americans in Mississippi and the over seven hundred college students from both southern and northern schools who descended upon the state to help in the cause for freedom and civil rights.