Harvey Fireside

Describes the Supreme Court decision in the case of New York Times v. Sullivan, preventing public officials from receiving damages for false statements unless they can prove actual malice.

Examines the trials of the men accused of murdering three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964, including the Supreme Court decision to try to defendants in a federal rather than a state court and the final verdicts which marked the first time, in Mississippi, that a jury convicted white men for killing African Americans or civil rights workers.