Sons of Mississipi

Zusatztext “A beautiful! poetic book about an ugly time in America's South. . . . Meticulously researched! exquisitely written and piercingly poignant.” -– Los Angeles Times “Profound. . . . Shattering [the] silence was Hendrickson’s goal. Filling it with a meanful! searching record is his tremendous accomplishment.” — Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Hendrickson is a talented writer! with an eye for the telling detail and a comfortable voice that is both personal and lyrical in the style of a James Agee or W. J. Cash.” — Washington Post Book World “Ambitious. . . . Vivid. . . . Treats the civil rights revolution and resistance not as dusty history but as the best and worst of American culture.” — USA Today Informationen zum Autor 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. Klappentext 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. Leseprobe Chapter 1 Dying Billy In his retirement, which wasn't kingly but pretty sweet, Billy Ferrell loved sitting on the dock of his lake house, watching Taco, his Labrador-blue heeler mix, splash around for bream and shad and the occasional white perch. It didn't matter a doughnut that the dog seldom got anything. It was good just to be down at the pier by himself or with a crony, in a peeling metal chair on the moss-green unpainted wood, looking out over the shallow water of the skinny, torpid lake. Hazel Ferrell would be up at the house, fussing with something or other, and so he'd sneak a smoke, cupping it on the inside of his fist so his wife wouldn't know, saying to himself, Well, hell, what is life but a series of doing a bunch of little things you're not supposed to do? Sometimes she'd bring down coffee for him. Seeing his spouse coming, the high sheriff of Natchez-which is how everyone still thought of Billy Ferrell, even if he wasn't sheriff anymore, that was his boy Tommy's show now-would quickly stub the cigarette out on the backside of the deck and toss it in the water. His arteries were clogging and the circulation in his legs wasn't good and there was a cancerous mass growing secretly in his lungs, but he was still a handsome man and he knew it. Vanity and pride had always been core Ferrell flaws. He wore gold-rimmed glasses now. The teeth were in trouble and his coal-black hair, which once had glistened in pictures and was parted forty-five degre...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Paul Hendrickson
• Editore: Vintage USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 06.01.2004
• EAN: 9780375704253
• ISBN: 978-0-375-70425-3
• Pagine: 368
• Dimensioni: 135 mm x 205 mm x 18 mm
• Categoria: Saggistica