In the 1939, Gone with the Wind was released, and became one of the most popular movies of all time. It painted a portrait of a racially harmonious, genteel south. Just a few years earlier, though, the sensational death of Jennie Merrill in Natchez, Mississippi at Goat Castle offered a much bleaker image of the southern elite and the region's racial politics.

Credit: This episode was created by Ainsley Chrystal, Bailey Street, Gaia Santoro Lecchini, and Elisabye Slaymaker. 

For a transcript of this episode and its sources, see https://sophia.smith.edu/hst272-sp20/the-goat-castle-murder/