On the following album by Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin’, the targets are even more diffuse.  “Only a Pawn in Their Game” is about the murder (Wikipedia calls it an “assassination”, and that is not really an overstatement) of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in his own driveway.  The conviction of the unrepentant Klansman Byron de la Beckwith for the murder took place in Mississippi in 1994; two other trials of this man 30 years earlier resulted in hung juries.  I don’t know how much visibility this murder has in other parts of the country, but it is still pretty fresh in Mississippi.  One reason is that Medgar’s widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams is a civil rights activist in her own right – she was on the local news just this month. 

(May 2013)