Sons of Mississippi by Paul Hendrickson

Sons of Mississippi by Paul Hendrickson

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.

The nonfiction book Sons of Mississippi by Paul Hendrickson earned the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2003. He has been a member of the University of Pennsylvania's Creative Writing Department faculty since 1998. He worked as a staff writer for the Washington Post for two decades before that. Searching for the Light: Marion Post Wolcott's Secret Life and Art (1992 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist) and The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War (1996 National Book Award finalist) are two of his other works. The Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lyndhurst Foundation, and the Alicia Patterson Foundation have all given him literary fellowships.

He was a joint visiting professor of documentary practice and American studies at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009. He is the father of two adult sons and lives outside of Philadelphia with his wife, Cecilia.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780375704253
ISBN 10	0375704256
Title	Sons of Mississippi
Author	Paul Hendrickson
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2004-01-06
Number of pages	368
Prizes	Winner of National Book Critics Circle Awards.
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.