Fifty years ago this week, Americus, Ga., made national news as racial unrest boiled over into violence and death. It was the final battle in the fight for the Voting Rights Act, a closing chapter in the struggle that had begun that spring in Selma, Ala. I devoted a chapter of my book, "The Class of '65," to the long hot summer that year in Americus. See that picture of a column of protesters? The white boy toward the left -- the only one in sight -- is my main character, Greg Wittkamper, who had just graduated from Americus High and was joining the marchers with his friend Collins McGee. The trouble started during a special election for justice of the peace when a candidate, a black woman, was told that she would have to stand in a separate voting line for colored people. For the next few weeks, there were daily demonstrations in Americus involving hundreds of protestors, roving bands of Klansmen, future governor Lester Maddox, future network anchorman Tom Brokaw, and civil rights leaders such as Hosea Williams, John Lewis and comedian Dick Gregory. It got ugly; one young man was killed in a drive-by shooting, and state troopers had to be summoned to keep the peace. How did it all end? You'll just have to read the book. (Thanks to Sam Mahone and the Americus-Sumter County Movement Remembered Committee, which found this photo in an old contact sheet.)