A big secret they couldn't escapeBy William Neikirk Tribune senior correspondent Published June 26, 2005 By October, Mississippi's searing heat usually gives way to the cool spells of fall. And so it was in 1967, in the graceful city of Meridian, where I had come to cover a federal trial as a reporter for The Associated Press. But a different kind of heaviness hung in the air that October long ago, a feeling no less oppressive than the swelter of a Mississippi summer. You could sense it by viewing Confederate flags some people had unfurled near the federal building. You...