NATCHEZ — The 27th Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration honored three individuals Saturday night whose works have had an impact on the state.

Those lauded were a filmmaker studying the Rhythm Night Club fire, a journalist who helped put Civil Rights era murderers behind bars and an English professor who befriended Eudora Welty and spent a career helping tell her stories.

Receiving the Richard Wright Literary Excellence Awards were Jerry Mitchell and Suzanne Marrs. And the Tricentennial Award for Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking was given to Bryan Burch.

Burch, unable to attend, was honored first as the director and producer of “The Rhythm Nightclub Fire: A Documentary,” which also won best documentary short film at the Orlando Film Festival and honorable mention at the Los Angeles Movie Awards.

Darrell White, director of cultural heritage tourism for the City of Natchez, accepted the award for Burch.

“Because of health concerns, he was unable to be here, but I have been in contact with him last night and this morning,” White said. “Now I can say, ‘Hey buddy, I got this for you.’”

Mitchell, an investigative reporter with the Clarion-Ledger, said he wasn’t sure a journalist like himself deserved to be alongside the likes of some of Mississippi’s greatest creative writers.

“I don’t know if ink-stained wretches like me should be spoken in the same breath as Eudora Welty, Faulkner and Richard Wright. I don’t know why, but I thank you and appreciate it,” he said about receiving the honor.

Starting in the 1980s, Mitchell developed sources who leaked hundreds of sealed documents of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission that helped him connect suspects to civil rights murders.

“They sealed all records for 50 years,” he said. “I was thinking there must be something in there.

“I don’t know about you, but when someone tells me I can’t do something, I want it more.”

Following the stories that came out of more than 2,400 pages of documents he received, several cold cases were open and four Klansmen and an accused serial killer were put behind bars.

“People often ask, ‘Why did you do it? What made you get involved in the civil rights?’” Mitchell said. “I quote Fannie Lou Hamar, ‘I did not choose it, it chose me.’”

Marrs taught for 15 years at the State University of New York at Oswego, and it was there where she learned to appreciate Welty by accident. A friend of her mother’s suggested that she lecture on the Mississippi author.

“I said, ‘Eudora who?’” Marrs said. “I read ‘Losing Battles’ and loved it. And so I began to teach her work in my class.”

When it came time to take her sabbatical in 1979, a colleague suggested she edit on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s household account books. Marrs had done her dissertation on Emerson.

“I had to pass on that,” she said. “I told him I was interested in Eudora Welty.”

During that sabbatical, she wrote some articles in residence at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. In 1983, she came to Jackson to the Department of Archives and History and requested to meet Welty.

The pair met, became friends, and ultimately in 1988 Marrs ended up teaching at Millsaps College where she could more closely study Welty, who 22 years ago received the first Richard Wright award.

“She couldn’t come to Natchez in 1994, so Natchez came to her and filmed her acceptance remarks,” she said. “I can’t match her words, but I am proud to receive the Richard Wright award.

“My writings are not investigative or creative, but hopefully they helped enhance your understanding of Welty’s works.”