Laura Faith Kebede

After a confession was beaten out of Ell Persons, a Memphis mob skipped the trial and went straight to execution. But confessions, then and now, don't always lead to justice.

Generations later, three people wrestle with the terrible history that brought their ancestors to a wooded area on the outskirts of Memphis a century ago,.

In 1917, a Black woodcutter named Ell Persons was accused of murdering a white teenage girl on the outskirts of Memphis. The evidence against him was slim, but the white mob had more than one reason to abduct him from police custody and burn him alive.

The federal building in Downtown Memphis was named after two men on opposing sides of history. Now only one remains.

Time is running out to gather evidence and documentation from the generation who bore witness to the Civil Rights Era and some of the crimes that were never prosecuted.

The Sanitation Workers' Strike may be known for the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. But a week earlier, after a protest turned unruly, a 17-year-old was gunned down by a Memphis police officer. Larry Payne's family doesn't want to see him become a footnote.

In L. Alex Wilson was one of the first editors of the Memphis Tri-State Defender newspaper, writing about civil rights. His grandson, a classical flute player, now channels his memory through music.