Jay Milner earned a B.A. and M.A. degree at Southern Mississippi College and spent a two-year stint as the managing editor of Greenville's Delta Democrat Times. In his 1961 novel Incident at Ashton, a young white newspaperman crusades for justice after an elderly black man is slain in retaliation for attempting to register as a voter.

Leroy L. Ramsey was born in Meridian, Mississippi and graduated from Jackson State College before moving north. Within the pages of The Trial and the Fire (1967), he returns to his home state to explore the impact of racial integration upon both the white and black inhabitants of "Milltown."