"In 1956, when 9 year old Sallie Ann Harrison was growing up in Greenwood, Mississippi, she read about Emmett Till's murder in Reader's Digest. Appalled that the murderers went free, she asked her father why. Henry Harrison, a progressive southern white businessman, suggested to his daughter that she ask J. Edgar Hoover. He gave her Hoover's address, and she wrote the FBI director a letter. Hoover's stern letter of response to the young Ms. Harrison informed her the case was closed, and to make no further inquiries.
Eight years later, at the height of the Civil Rights movement, Sallie Ann Harrison's father was shot and killed by the Greenwood, Mississippi police at his retail store. The police called it a "tragic accident."
Sallie Ann is now the grandmother of two biracial, African-American grandsons. She is troubled about what tell these children about their southern white heritage. She decides to return to Mississippi to learn more about what happened to her father, and the circumstances of his death. Missing police records and contradictory stories plague her search. While the truth about her father's death eludes her, Sallie Ann grasps the enormous price her parents and other progressive, southern whites paid for their beliefs in racial justice. With wit and insight, Sallie Ann retrieves a powerful legacy for her biracial grandsons- the story of their white family's spirited defiance of racial injustice." Dvd back cover