Reveal Presents (Investigations) · Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting

Mississippi Goddam Chapter 1: The Promise

February 1, 2022·51 min·4 clips

Host Alex warns listeners about a racial slur in the first two minutes of this intensely personal investigation into racism.

Alex starts with a careful warning. The series is going into racism, and the first minutes include a slur used against him. The tone is personal right away. From there, the episode names the ordinary pressures around the reporting: Confederate flags, neighbors who will not talk, and intimidation that can sit in the background until it cannot. The story then turns to Rodney King and the way a home video camera forced one buried story into public view. Soon the reporters reach Losedale. They walk into a quiet room with a bar against the wall, autographed headshots of blues singers on the walls, and only a few people inside. The owner comes over friendly and asks what brought them there. It sounds simple, but in a small town it lands differently. The reporter pauses before answering. They are in the Deep South, looking into a case involving police, so even a casual question needs care. JJ thinks asking might help. The reporter asks plainly whether the owner has heard of Billy Joe Johnson. That changes the room. The owner says he coached Billy Joe and was at the scene after the death. Then he offers his theory: the shotgun went off by accident. The investigation has barely started, but explanations are already moving around town, along with the idea that the family would not accept any official result. Then the road tightens toward Bendale. GPS only gets them close. The search becomes dirt roads, pine forest, dead ends, knocked doors, and a relative pointing them in the right direction. At the trailer, the truck is still there. It is the same pickup Billy Joe was pulled over in and died beside, weathered now but not gone. The ending leaves the story unsettled. Another version of events, another sound at a door, and another scared call to a mother make it clear the first explanation will not be the last.

As heard by us

A serious account of racism, memory, and the case around Billy Joe Johnson.

The opening comes in hard: it warns about a racial slur, then makes plain that this series is personal, tense, and built around racism. Confederate flags, neighbors refusing to speak because of blackness, and the everyday grind of intimidation all land with ugly clarity, and the…

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Why you'd press play

For a tense Deep South investigation where local detail keeps turning into the bigger story.

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