Half a century has not diminished the frustration and pain for those who knew Wharlest Jackson.

The then-36-year-old father of five, was killed when a bomb exploded beneath his truck as he drove home to his family on Feb. 27, 1967.

Jackson’s only crime was that he was black and had the audacity, hate-filled racists said at the time, of accepting a promotion to a “white” job at Natchez’s Armstrong Tire and Rubber Company.

Investigators have long believed the bomb planted beneath Jackson’s truck to be the work of a local Ku Klux Klan group.

Despite a number of attempts at investigating Jackson’s murder, no one was ever charged. In 1998, then Natchez Police Chief Willie Huff reopened the case and eventually concluded the most probable culprits were already deceased, victims of the years that they lived after cutting Jackson’s life short.

Jackson’s murder was so heinous that it shocked Natchez, the state of Mississippi and even the world. Established newspapers at the time — including this one — typically did not report crimes against blacks with the same lens of fairness as is done today.

Yet, in Jackson’s case, the community was so shocked that it was front-page news then, as it should be.

While it might be easy to simply discount Jackson as a victim of the greater Civil Rights Movement, we tend to look at him as a victim, yes, but also as a victor as well.

Through the horrible sacrifices Jackson and others whose lives were taken during that time, peace eventually reigned in Natchez and across the South.

How we celebrate and build upon that peace — the foundation of which was laid through violence and sacrifice — is up to us.