More than forty years ago three civil rights workers were savagely slain in Neshoba County. That heinous crime was a watershed in the struggle for equality for African-Americans. Return to Mississippi retells the story of the murders and the trial that ensued ­ events upon which the feature film Mississippi Burning was based.

Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Mickey Schwerner disappeared while teaching and registering African-American voters for the 1964 presidential election. On August 4th of that year, their bodies were recovered from an earthen dam. Eventually, in a landmark case that required the intervention of the Supreme Court, a jury returned guilty verdicts against seven conspirators. Rare archival footage includes Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcoln X and Fannie Lou Hamer.

Current interviews featuring personalities at the center of the story run as counterpoint. These include Jerry Mitchell and Hollis Watkins, two civil rights coordinators who had trained the slain workers in Ohio just before they left for Mississippi, and Adora Obi Niweze, currently President of the NAACP in Florida who, talking about the voter registration drive in 2004 comments: "We've made gains but they will all be for naught if we don't fight to keep this door open."

The film implicitly asks how far the struggle for civil rights has come, and what remains to be done.