Neshoba: The Price of Freedom

“Jewish and African Americans have stood shoulder to shoulder. They took buses down south together. They marched together. They bled together. And Jewish Americans like Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were willing to die alongside a black man - James Chaney - on behalf of freedom and equality. Their legacy is our heritage.” - Barack Obama.

In 1964, a mob of Klansmen murdered three civil rights workers in the small Mississippi county of Neshoba (a crime that came to be known as the "Mississippi Burning" murders). These young men, two Jews from New York and an African-American from Mississippi, were in the Deep South helping register African-American voters during what became known as "Freedom Summer." Although the Klansmen bragged about what they did, no one was held accountable for murder until 2005, when the state indicted the mastermind of the killings, Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old Baptist preacher and notorious racist.

Neshoba: The Price of Freedom tells the story of these three American heroes and the Mississippi county still divided over the meaning of justice 40 years after their murders. The film takes an unflinching look at ordinary citizens struggling to find peace with their town's violent, racist past in today's America.

“This film is a document of hope, progress and idealism but also a reminder that the deep springs of bigotry and violence that fed a long, vicious campaign of domestic terrorism have not dried up.” (A.O. Scott, New York Times)