Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy - Softcover

Hendrickson, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375704256 ISBN 13: 9780375704253

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2004

Synopsis

They stand as unselfconscious as if the photograph were being taken at a church picnic and not during one of the pitched battles of the civil rights struggle. None of them knows that the image will appear in Life magazine or that it will become an icon of its era. The year is 1962, and these seven white Mississippi lawmen have gathered to stop James Meredith from integrating the University of Mississippi. One of them is swinging a billy club.

More than thirty years later, award-winning journalist and author Paul Hendrickson sets out to discover who these men were, what happened to them after the photograph was taken, and how racist attitudes shaped the way they lived their lives. But his ultimate focus is on their children and grandchildren, and how the prejudice bequeathed by the fathers was transformed, or remained untouched, in the sons. Sons of Mississippi is a scalding yet redemptive work of social history, a book of eloquence and subtlely that tracks the movement of racism across three generations and bears witness to its ravages among both black and white Americans.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Intelligence, subtlety, and the nuances of history glitter on every page of this elegant and moving book. Hendrickson isolates one minute in time and, like a sculptor approaching a granite block, he chips and chisels at it until he reveals the human forms, the human truths — hatred and bitterness, misgiving and courage, cruelty and
generosity -- packed in a tangled embrace within it."
—Melissa Fay Greene
“Beautifully written, meticulously reported, Sons of Mississippi is a remarkable book. The story of the victims of racism in this country has been told and should keep being told. But we desperately need this portrait of the oppressors, and the legacy they bequeathed. This is not only an invaluable book on vital aspects of the civil rights struggle, but a lasting work of modern American history.”
—Gay Talese
“Paul Hendrickson goes deep below the surface of race relations in Mississippi to make an old story terribly and movingly new. The patented Hendrickson style, unique in American journalism, has never been deployed to better effect.”
—Jack Miles

“Paul Hendrickson in Sons of Mississippi knows that the South is about irony, and he captures it and its people with beautiful storytelling.”
—Rick Bragg

“Paul Hendrickson's wonderful, richly textured book is a compelling reminder of how the civil rights movement changed, and did not change, the world of white and black sons and daughters of Mississippi. It holds out the hope that someday social justice will come but reminds us of how hard it is to overcome the burden of race in our society.”
--Mary Frances Berry, Chairperson, United States Commission on Civil Rights

“Paul Hendrickson starts this book with the simplest of things, an old photo taken 40 years ago of some Mississippi sheriffs gathered to make their stand in one of the final battles of the Civil Rights movement–the integration of Ole Miss. Then he deftly opens up the photo, finding the men themselves, their children and their grandchildren. And in the process in this haunting, lyrical book, the past becomes the present and the present becomes the past.”
--David Halberstam

“Written with ethereal elegance, Sons of Mississippi explores the pathos of racism in the American South with a rare lyrical intensity. Paul Hendrickson, a truly gifted journalist, journeyed into our Civil Rights past and found spoonfuls of redemption. A truly brilliant, evocative mediation which enlightens both the mind and the soul.”
--Douglas Brinkley, Director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies and Professor of History at the University of New Orleans

About the Author:

Paul Hendrickson, a prizewinning feature writer for the Washington Post for more than twenty years, now teaches nonfiction writing at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Seminary: A Search, Looking for the Light: The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War (a finalist for the National Book Award). He lives with his wife and two sons in Philadelphia.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0375704256
• ISBN 13: 9780375704253
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368