On NPR’s White Lies, two Alabama journalists take on one of the most notorious murders of the civil rights era – a long dormant cold case – and they solve it.

The story begins on March 9, 1965, when James Reeb, a white Unitarian Minister from Boston, arrived in Selma, Alabama, to join a march on behalf of black Americans and their right to vote. Two days before, demonstrators in Selma had been attacked by state troopers on their journey to Montgomery, a brutal event that would come to be known as Bloody Sunday. Reeb saw images on TV of troopers firing teargas grenades and pummeling unarmed marchers with billy clubs. On White Lies, a Selma woman named Joanne Bland describes the scene: “What I remember the most are the screams. People were just screaming, and I probably was, too – screaming and screaming.” So Reeb said goodbye to his wife and four young kids, and went down to Selma to protest injustice. More…