A lesson before dying

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Grant Wiggins has become resigned to racial injustice in the south. Returning to his home town with a college degree, he continues to teach in the same one-room school of his youth. Struggling to make a difference in an oppressive time and place, Grant is called upon by two local women, Tante Lou and Miss Emma, to visit the town prison. There, Jefferson, a simple young man, has been convicted of a murder he did not commit and sentenced to die like an animal. Jefferson is full of rage and resentment, and the women are convinced that somehow he must be taught to die not like an animal, but like a man. lt falls upon the teacher to enrich a life he cannot save and, in so doing, somehow redeem his own, by teaching one young man...