Based on interviews, denominational records, church and secular newspapers memoirs, and the records of Edgar Ray Killen's murder trial and manslaughter convictions in 2005 for the killing in Neshoba County in 1964 of three civil rights workers who were investigating the arson of Mount Zion Methodist Church, this book is a well-written but disjointed study that addresses a wide range of topics, sometimes thinly, and seems unsure of its focus. The book discusses the founding of Neshoba County in 1833 and the development of Mount Zion Church in the African-American hamlet of Longdale between 1833 and 1954 in its first part; the Methodist (Episcopal) Church and its black members between 1920 and 1964 in its second; and the Neshoba County murders and their aftermath between 1964 and 2005 in its third. Despite the book's title, several chapters discuss the union of the Methodist Church's northern and southern contingents in 1939 that came at the price of creating a segregated national Central Jurisdiction for all of the denomination's black churches, and the struggle nationally and in Mississippi to end the Jurisdiction, topics previously examined in detail by several scholars. The book's original contribution lies in its examination of race relations in Neshoba County across a broad span of time and of the history of Mount Zion and Longdale, both of which would have benefited from a more thorough exploration. It is puzzling that the author, Carol V. R. George, claims that Mississippi's response to the United States Supreme Court's school desegregation ruling in 1954, Brown v. Board of Education, comprised ‘delaying tactics and go-slow policies’ and ‘small changes that gave the appearance of accommodating to the Court’ (p. 93). However, in 1956, the state assembly abolished compulsory school attendance requirements and passed an interposition resolution declaring Brown unconstitutional. Token school desegregation did not begin until 1964 and, even then, was confined to just four urban localities. George argues that in early 1964 ‘the Methodist Church remained officially committed to segregation’ (p. 121), yet, fifty pages later, she concedes that in 1956 the Methodist General Conference had endorsed the Brown decision and called for the abolition of the Central Jurisdiction, albeit relying in vain on white Methodist conferences voluntarily to accept transfers of the Jurisdiction's black conferences and Churches. Individual chapters frequently address events that belong chronologically in subsequent chapters and proof-reading did not detect some missing words. Despite the author's contentions, the March on Washington occurred in 1963, not 1962, and the film Mississippi Burning was not filmed in Neshoba County. However, readers unfamiliar with the history of Methodism and race relations in the twentieth century in general and their intersection in Mississippi in particular will find the book a useful and engrossing introduction.