I recently saw a TV movie about Medgar Evers and the murder of Emmett Till. This reminded me of James Baldwin's play "Blues for Mister Charlie" which was loosely based on the case. Here is an extract of Baldwin's intro to the play...
"This play has been on my mind--has been bugging me--for several years. It is unlike anything else I've ever attempted in that I remember vividly the first time it occurred to me; for in fact, it did not occur to me, but to Elia Kazan. Kazan asked me at the end of 1958 if I would be interested in working in the Theatre. It was a generous offer, but I did not then, and don't now, have much respect for what goes on in the American Theatre. I am not convinced that it is a Theatre; it seems to me a series, merely, of commercial speculations, stale, repetitious, and timid. I certainly didn't see much future for me in that frame-work, and I was profoundly unwilling to risk my morale and my talent--my life--in endeavours which could only increase a level of frustration already dangerously high.
"Nevertheless, the germ of the play persisted. It is based, very distantly indeed, on the case of Emmett Till--the Negro youth who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955. The murderer in this case was acquitted. (His brother, who helped him do the deed, is now a deputy sheriff in Rulesville, Mississippi.) After his acquittal, he recounted the facts of the murder--for one cannot refer to his performance as a confession--to William Bradford Huie, who wrote it all down in an article called "Wolf Whistle." I do not know why the case pressed on my mind so hard--but it would not let me go. I absolutely dreaded committing myself to writing a play--there were enough people around already telling me that I couldn't write novels--but I began to see that my fear of the form masked a much deeper fear. That fear was that I would never be able to draw a valid portrait of the murderer. In life, obviously, such people baffle and terrify me and, with one part of my mind at least, I hate them and would be willing to kill them. Yet, with another part of my mind, I am aware that no man is a villain in his own eyes. Something in the man knows--must know--that what he is doing is evil; but in order to accept the knowledge the man would have to change. What is ghastly and really almost hopeless in our racial situation now is that the crimes we have committed are so great and so unspeakable that the acceptance of this knowledge would lead, literally, to madness. The human being, then, in order to protect himself, closes his eyes, compulsively repeats his crimes, and enters a sprititual darkness which no one can describe...." --James Baldwin
New York, April 1964