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

Hendrickson, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375404619 ISBN 13: 9780375404610

Publisher: Knopf, 2003

Synopsis

Sons of Mississippi recounts the story of seven white Mississippi lawmen depicted in a horrifically telling 1962 Life magazine photograph—and of the racial intolerance that is their legacy.

In that photograph, which appears on the front of this jacket, the lawmen (six sheriffs and a deputy sheriff) admire a billy club with obvious pleasure, preparing for the unrest they anticipate—and to which they clearly intend to contribute—in the wake of James Meredith’s planned attempt to integrate the University of Mississippi. In finding the stories of these men, Paul Hendrickson gives us an extraordinarily revealing picture of racism in America at that moment. But his ultimate focus is on the part this legacy has played in the lives of their children and grandchildren.

One of them is a grandson—a high school dropout and many times married—who achieves an elegant poignancy in his struggle against the racism to which he sometimes succumbs. One son is a sheriff, as his father was—and in the same town. Another grandson patrols the U.S. border with Mexico—a law enforcement officer like the two generations before him—driven by the beliefs and deeds of his forebears. In all the portraits, we see how the prejudice bequeathed by the fathers has been transformed, or remained untouched, in the sons.

For its sense of fragile hope, Sons of Mississippi is a profoundly important, revelatory work of still-evolving history. A stunning book by a masterful writer.

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
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0375404619
• ISBN 13: 9780375404610
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368