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Civil Rights/Reading List
Reading List From Cover Notes
Compiled by Susan Klopfer, 2003
Keep returning, since I will be adding more selections on a regular basis. Do you
have a favorite to share? Please send email and let me know.
January 2004 List
Cobb, James C. 1992. The Most Southern Place on Earth. Oxford University Press.
James Cobb offers a comprehensive history of what has been called “the deepest South,” from the first white settlement in the 1820s to the present. He paints a fascinating portrait of the “development and survival of a society and economy that is often seen as the most extreme in all the South – an area where, despite the large black majority, whites have kept their grip on power through every era”.
Wilkie, Curtis. 2001. Dixie: A Personal Odyssey Through Events That Shaped the Modern South. Scribner.
Curtis Wilkie offers a personal odyssey through events that shaped the modern South in this political and social history of the South during the second half of the twentieth century. His personal take on some of the landmark events of modern American history is engaging and insightful. After graduation from Ole Miss, he worked in Clarksdale where he met Aaron Henry, later the head of the state NAACP. He covered the Freedom Summer of 1964 and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenge at the national convention in Atlantic City. He left the South in 1969 and traveled as a world reporter, but returned in 1993.
Metress, Christopher, ed. 2002. The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative. University of Virginia Press.
Christopher Metress set out to write a detailed account of the murder of Emmett Till. As he went deeper into his research, however, a new story began to emerge, “one not so much centered on a particular moment in history as concerned about the relationship between memory and history.” He found himself distilling information, “sifting and sorting facts, distinguishing between false testimonies and true declarations” – doing the work of a good historian. What came of his work was a collection of narratives from news articles, editorials, poems, songs, memoirs, interviews about one of the most important events in American history. Metress explores the impact of the lunching during its day as well as the enduring presence of the crime “in the cultural and literary imagination of this country.” The documentary also tells a large narrative “about how we come to know what we know and how we accept that knowledge as the truth to how we evaluate what we believe we know and how we strive in response to know more..” in the words of Metress.
Henry, Aaron with Constance Curry. 2000. The Fire Ever Burning. University Press.
The late Aaron Henry (1922- 1997) was “one of the nation’s major grassroots fighters in the freedom movement on local, state and national levels. Long before many others, he was a civil rights activist; he preferred to stay out of the limelight”. He owned a small drugstore in Clarksdale, and was a businessman. Henry was key in bringing Head Start to his state along with improved housing, employment, and health services. He was known for his quiet diplomacy yet he faced recurring death threats, thirty-three jailings, and Klan bombings of his home and drugstore. He remained stalwart and courageous and was highly respected by many, including the late Robert Kennedy, for his contributions. This work was compiled from Henry’s papers by Constance Currry who is known for her contributions on this topic.
Silver, James W. 1963. Mississippi: The Closed Society. Harcourt, Brace & World.
This is a brave tale told by a brave man about insurrection in modern American, “more particularly, about the social and historical background of that insurrection”. It was written by a native who was a historian, and who, on September 20, 1962, witnessed the long night of riot that exploded on the Oxford campus when students, and, later, adults with no connection with the University, attacked United States marshals sent to the campus to protect James H. Meredith, the first Black to attend Ole Miss. Professor Silver paid for this book with his job, after describing “how the state’s commitment to the doctrine of white supremacy led to the situation in which the state found that continued intransigence and possibly violence was the only course offered” to them.
Santelli, Robert. 2001. The Big Book of Blues. Penguin.
Robert Santelli has written blues articles for Rolling Stone, CD Review, The New York Times and numerous other publications and is the former vice-president of Education and Public Programs at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So he is the right person to be writing The this ultimate reference book for blues lovers. He’s included more than 650 entries that profile every important blues artist – from Charley Patton to Stevie Ray Vaughn. Each sketch goes beyond the basics and includes a discussion of the artist’s style, musical contribution, and “essential listening.”
Woods, Clyde. 1998. Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power. Verso.
Woods’ book provides “a major reinterpretation of the
two-centuries-old conflict between African American workers and the planters of
this region.” He shows how African Americans there have continued to
push forward their agenda for social and economic justice despite having
suffered countless defeats under planter regime, all the while interweaving the
role of music in sustaining their efforts. Woods “take the blues seriously as
theory and social critique…he goes on to show how it constitutes a critique of
the plantation South, New South modernization, and the transformations of
capitalist agriculture during the so-called green revolution.”
Cohodas, Nadine. 1997. The Band Played Dixie: Race and the Liberal Conscience at Ole Miss. The Free Press.
Ironically, this book by Nadine Cohodas was published in 1997, the year Cleve McDowell (first African-American accepted into the Ole Miss law school) was murdered. Fortunately, Cohodas was able to interview McDowell in 1995, beforfe his death. She, perhaps, is the only author who has done so. Cohodas has covered vicil rights issues for more than a decade and gives a solid account of the history of Ole Miss with its rocky beginnings of integration followed by the admission of James Meredith and then McDowell.
Duberman, Martin. 2002. Left Out: The Politics of Exclusion. South End Press.
Duberman presents a summation of his views on such matters as race, foreign policy, gender and sexuality. Left Out offers a solid analyses of the Left’s split between class-based and identity-based politics. He is an award-winning historian who has written extensively on the African-American freedom struggle.
Hendrickson, Paul. 2003. Sons of Mississippi. Alfred A. Knopf.
Hendrickson recounts the story of seven white Miss. lawmen depicted in a horrifically telling 1962 Life magazine photograph – and of the racial intolerance that is their legacy. In the photograph, the six sheriffs and a deputy sheriff admire a billy club with obvious pleasure, preparing for the unrest they anticipate in the wake of James Meredith’s planned attempt to integrate the Ole Miss. The author gives an extraordinary revealing picture of racism in the United States at that moment. His ultimate focus is on the part this legacy has played in the lives of their children and grandchildren.