Mamie Lang Kirkland was seven years old when she fled Ellisville, Mississippi, in 1915 with her mother and siblings as her father and his friend, John Hartfield, escaped an approaching lynch mob. John Hartfield, who returned to Mississippi in 1919, was killed in one of the most horrific lynchings of the era. Mamie's son, Tarabu, had grown up hearing the stories but didn't know whether these were fact or folklore until discovering an article in 2015 that described Hartfield's murder before a crowd of 10,000 spectators. Mamie had vowed for a century that she would never return to Mississippi, but Tarabu urged his mother to confront her childhood trauma. Mamie was 107 when they began the journey to Ellisville to connect her story to the larger impact of America's legacy of racial violence. Mamie's story of experiencing and surviving racial terrorism, segregation, bigotry and bias is a testament to the courage and hope of her generation, and to her own indomitable will and contagious joy in living.