Cletus Ray Hogg shot the first black brakeman hired by the Illinois Central Railroad. Both assailant and victim got religion after the shooting. Hogg got sober in jail and stayed that way. The victim got a Doctorate in Divinity from Memphis Theological Seminary and runs a megachurch in the Whitehaven district in Memphis.
This is why so much great literature comes out of the south. Only in the south do you get Cletus Ray Hoggs sharing a story with that much triumph, transcendence and recovery, because only southerners are the Cletus Ray Hogg degree of screwed up.
Evolution happens.