“Can you tell me what it is?”

“No. I won’t expose you to potential criminal charges.”

She nods soberly. “Just tell me this. Do you think there’s any hope? Of finding out the truth, I mean.”

I fight the urge to be optimistic. A lawyer has to make that mistake only once to learn what it costs. You give people hope; then the pendulum swings the wrong way and they’re left shattered, as much by false hope as by misfortune.

“I wouldn’t take the case if there wasn’t hope. But I want to proceed cautiously. I promise to contact you if and when I learn anything of value. I understand that you’ve waited a long time for justice.”

Althea’s hands are clenched in her lap, the knuckles white.

“If you feel up to it, I’d like you to tell me what you can about what Del was doing at the battery plant before he died. For civil rights, I mean.”

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, as though striving to remember with perfect accuracy. “Del wasn’t any big civil rights worker. He was a workingman. He just saw things he thought were wrong and did what he could to change them. When he was a young man, he was carefree. You never saw a smile so full and happy. When he went to Korea, something changed in him. He still had that smile, but it didn’t fill up his eyes the way it used to. He was different inside. He got shot over there, and I think he saw some pretty bad things. When he got back, he told me life was too short to spend it standing at the back of the line.”

“When did he go to work at Triton Battery?”

“A couple of years after the war. He put in his time and saved his money back then. Said he didn’t want to marry me till he could afford to take care of me like I deserved.” Althea’s voice cracks a little, but she smiles. “I sure got tired of waiting. Del bought this house in 1959, for cash money. Not many black men could do that back then.”

“You got married in fifty-nine?”

She nods. “It was right around then that Del met Medgar.”

“Medgar Evers?”

“Yes. Medgar heard how good Del was doing at the plant, and wanted to meet him. Medgar was building up the NAACP back then, pushing voter registration. Del loved Medgar. Loved his quiet way. Said he’d known men like Medgar in the army. Quiet men who worked hard and wouldn’t back down for anything. Medgar took to Del too. He saw that Del didn’t hate the white man. Del believed if we could help white people see inside us, see past the color, their hearts would change.”

“So Medgar got Del into civil rights work?”