New Orleans Film Festival 2009

Neshoba tells the story of a Mississippi town still divided about the meaning of justice, 40 years after the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, an event dramatized in the Oscar-winning film, Mississippi Burning. Although Klansmen bragged openly in 1964, no one was held accountable until 2005, when the State indicted preacher Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old notorious racist and mastermind of the murders. Through exclusive, first-time interviews with Killen, intimate interviews with the victims’ families, and candid interviews with black and white Neshoba County citizens struggling to find peace with their town's violent past, the film explores whether the prosecution of one unrepentant Klansman constitutes justice and whether healing and reconciliation are possible without telling the unvarnished truth.