On April 8, 1968, four days after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, five black youths between the ages of 16 and 20, set out to burn the Ku Klux Klan meeting hall in the predominately white, rural town of Benson, North Carolina. Angered both by King’s murder and by local Klansmen who had ridden through their black community, “Sorrow Valley,” brandishing weapons, and harassing them in the wake of the civil rights leader’s death, the young men did not succeed in their endeavors. Despite their young age and having no prior criminal activity, the five young men were arrested. What happened next forever changed the lives of The Benson Five.