Shawn Hornbeck was held prisoner for more than four years by pizza shop owner Michael Devlin — until he was rescued in January 2007 alongside a second boy named Ben Ownby.

From 1930 until her death in 1990, Nellie Jackson operated a bordello in Natchez, Mississippi and became a pillar of the community, even helping the FBI fight the Ku Klux Klan.

During the Civil War, Rachel Knight joined forces with a white Southern Unionist named Newton Knight — and helped him wage a guerrilla campaign against Confederates in Mississippi.