The Girl in the Yellow Scarf

Carol Jenkins was just 21-years old when she was stabbed and killed in 1968 while selling encyclopedias in a former Sundown Town - Martinsville, Indiana. For three decades, the murder mystery sat cold in police files, void of justice. Carol's death prompted generations of fear and warnings for African Americans throughout Central Indiana and among students passing through Martinsville en route to Indiana University, in Bloomington. Martinsville became known nationally as a racist community that refused to believe Carol's death was the result of a hate crime. In 2001, Investigative Reporter Sandra Chapman exposed police missteps and prompted a break in the case. An unexpected child witness called Chapman with a shocking revelation: "If the girl had a yellow scarf and was killed with a screwdriver, my father could be the killer." For the FIRST time in three decades, there was an arrest. But who was the accomplice? Family members now reveal what they know to the reporter turned film producer, Sandra Chapman, who is uniquely situated to tell the story. And now, 50 years after Carol's death, the rural communities where she lived and died face a reckoning with race relations as the nation grapples with cultural sensitivities. The Girl in the Yellow Scarf documentary takes viewers beyond the headlines and inside the drama of one of Indiana's most notorious Civil Rights Era murders with exclusive eyewitness accounts, case documents, and historical perspectives. All of this, as the emerging legacy of Carol Jenkins takes its place within Civil Rights History.