JACKSON, Miss. -- Twenty years ago a young girl from London,England signed up to be an exchange student, and found herself in Clarksdale, Miss.  “It changed my life,” said Francoise Hamlin.

It was there she began to study Clarksdale’s role in the civil rights movement.  So intrigued by what she learned, Hamlin later decided to write a book detailing it all.  “It’s my understanding of my experience there 20-years ago; and also a document to what happened for my peers who have no real knowledge of their own history,” she said.

Hamlin was in Jackson Wednesday to discussed her book, “Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta After World War II,” as part of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History's "History is Lunch" series.