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Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy
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 i s a profoundly important, revelatory work of still-evolving history. A stunning book by a masterful writer.
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 i s a profoundly important, revelatory work of still-evolving history. A stunning book by a masterful writer.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
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October 31, 2008
I'm never written a book. But if I could choose one book that I wish I had written instead of the actual author, this would be the one. Everything in history that I've ever cared deeply about is in this book--Mississippi, the South, Civil Rights stuff, everything.
December 7, 2009
In February 1995, Washington Post reporter Paul Hendrickson was browsing in a bookstore in Berkeley, where he came across a book of photographs by Charles Moore from the civil rights era.
In one photo, a group of white men has focused its attention on a man gripping a wooden stick as if it were a baseball bat. He has a cigarette clenched in his teeth as he demonstrates, with evident amusement, how he intends to use this stick. Meanwhile, the man to his left, whose cigarette is dangling from his upper lip, tears a piece of white cloth into strips -- a man at the extreme right of the photo has tied one of the strips around his left arm.
Another man, with a Stetson pushed back on his head, is laughing -- perhaps at what the stick man is doing. At the left of the photo, a man with the soggy stub of a cigar in his mouth is similarly amused. In the background, a serious-looking man is apparently in conversation with a man obscured by the others.
Context is everything. When we know that these men are Mississippi sheriffs, gathered on the campus of the University of Mississippi in September 1962 just before the attempt of a black man, James Meredith, to enroll at the university, then we think we know the context. Recognition floods in: racist lawmen of a certain age and time, kinsmen of the bully cops of Birmingham and Montgomery and Selma.
I know these men, or the men like them who were my neighbors, my uncles, my friends' fathers and our Sunday school teachers and scoutmasters. When I was growing up in Mississippi, they would say such appalling things about black people that even to remember 40 or 50 years later causes my gorge to rise. Yet I also know that when they weren't spewing racist filth, they could be men one could respect and even love. It was as if, in the lives of these men, a tributary of human feeling had been dammed, grown stagnant and polluted, and its foulness had seeped out and corrupted a mainstream that should have run clear.
Hendrickson has noted this paradox, too: ''In the South, as has been observed, people who aren't victims of injustice often are victims of irony.'' Is it any wonder that so many Mississippians have written so much good fiction?
If we look at any image long enough, it begins to ''tease us out of thought,'' as Keats put it when he tried to wrest the secrets from the figures on his Grecian urn. And something kept Hendrickson looking at this image: ''I wanted to know: How did these seven white Southerners get to be this way, and how did it all end, or how is it still going on, and was there no eventual shame here, and what happened to their progeny, especially their progeny, and was it all just ineluctable?''
It seems that no one spends much time in Mississippi without trying to write like Faulkner, resorting to words like ''progeny'' and ''ineluctable.'' And Hendrickson spent a lot of time in Mississippi trying to answer the questions raised by this picture. Context is everything, but contexts have contexts, ad infinitum. Especially when you're dealing with something so integral to the American experience -- so, yes, ineluctable -- as racial conflict.
For seven years, Hendrickson searched through the contexts of this image. Most of the men in the picture were dead, but their families, as well as the two surviving men, sat down to talk with him in that generous but wary way that Southerners have. The survivors were defensive but not apologetic, Hendrickson tells us: ''Anything in the direction of atonement or expiation -- even if never named that or understood as such -- has been left to sons, or to sons of sons, or to sons of sons of sons.''
And so the most poignant profiles in his book are of the grandsons of two of the men. John Cothran's grandfather is the man with the armband in the photo, then the sheriff in the Mississippi Delta town of Greenwood. The grandson is a man with anger-management problems that wrecked three marriages before he was 30, a high school dropout who works as a supervisor at a Home Depot, a job that gives him more stress than gratification.
Ty Ferrell's grandfather is the man with the stick, Billy Ferrell, the sheriff in Natchez -- a job that Ty's father, Tommy, now holds. Ty has followed in the family profession, but not in Mississippi -- he's a Border Patrol agent, working out of El Paso, and is so deeply conflicted about what he's doing that it sometimes brings him close to tears in his conversations with Hendrickson. Ty exhibits ''what seemed like existential torment, as if he were meant to be a roiling repository for so many unnamed, unclaimed Ferrell family shames.''
Hendrickson understands the pain of John Cothran and Ty Ferrell, which makes the profiles of the grandsons more affecting than those of the men who appear in the photo. For Hendrickson never succeeds in answering the first of his questions: How did they get to be this way? ''It's so puzzling that a land of such charm and physical beauty, a people of such natural grace and disposition to kindness, could have so appalling a history,'' Hendrickson muses. How did a bigotry so pathological take hold of an entire region?
The best Hendrickson can do is to cite ''The Mind of the South,'' W.J. Cash's 1941 classic, in which Cash, a Southern journalist, wrote of a ''crisis of white masculinity'': ''The ultimate and as-yet-unrealized expression of the overthrow of slavery in the white male mind would be the destruction of the white sexual order.'' So Hendrickson asks about the men in the picture, ''Is it too much to suggest that there may be a faint undertone of sexualized tension in their faces?''
What I see in this picture I have seen in locker rooms and committee meetings and other all-male gatherings, where testosterone speaks to testosterone and the old primate emerges. But what I also see are the products of a closed system, of a place where opinions went unchallenged by other ways of thinking, to the point that prevailing attitudes could be swaddled in a communal bigotry. (There are many other places like this in the world, which makes understanding the Mississippi experience all the more crucial.)
By far the most potent figure in Hendrickson's book is a man who doesn'tappear in the photograph: James Meredith, who shattered the monolithic system of racial repression -- if it could happen in Mississippi, it could happen anywhere.
But Meredith stepped out to his own drummer -- after his graduation from Ole Miss, he stubbornly refused to align with any civil rights organization, starting his own solitary crusade for voting rights, including a one-man march through Mississippi during which he was almost assassinated. Later, he would shock and appall even those who had regarded him as a hero: He took a job as an aide to Sen. Jesse Helms and endorsed ex-Klansman David Duke's candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination -- Meredith even volunteered to be Duke's running mate. Hendrickson's interviews with Meredith only reinforce his reputation for eccentricity.
As the 40th anniversary of Meredith's entrance to Ole Miss approached, his son, Joe, quietly enrolled in a Ph.D. program in business at the university. Joe, who had graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, seems puzzled by his father, too. He tells Hendrickson, ''My father has an overwhelming need to be famous and so will do whatever he thinks will provide that and get him attention -- Jesse Helms, David Duke, you name it, even if it's only for a day.''
''Sons of Mississippi'' feels like a substantial, maybe even essential, contribution to our understanding not only of Southern racism, but also of the ways that the past can mark and mar. The book is sometimes over-reported -- not every detail of Joe Cothran's messy, mundane life is worth telling, for example. And complexities sometimes overwhelm Hendrickson -- his book occasionally seems like several very good magazine articles struggling to get out of the stack of paper in which they're buried.
But Hendrickson is a humane observer who can disarm the reader's impatience. And he's clearly on a mission -- you don't spend seven years researching a book if you're not. As he puts it, ''In Mississippi, nothing ever changes, and everything always changes, and sometimes it seems as if God put Mississippi on earth purely for our moral and confounding contemplation.''
In one photo, a group of white men has focused its attention on a man gripping a wooden stick as if it were a baseball bat. He has a cigarette clenched in his teeth as he demonstrates, with evident amusement, how he intends to use this stick. Meanwhile, the man to his left, whose cigarette is dangling from his upper lip, tears a piece of white cloth into strips -- a man at the extreme right of the photo has tied one of the strips around his left arm.
Another man, with a Stetson pushed back on his head, is laughing -- perhaps at what the stick man is doing. At the left of the photo, a man with the soggy stub of a cigar in his mouth is similarly amused. In the background, a serious-looking man is apparently in conversation with a man obscured by the others.
Context is everything. When we know that these men are Mississippi sheriffs, gathered on the campus of the University of Mississippi in September 1962 just before the attempt of a black man, James Meredith, to enroll at the university, then we think we know the context. Recognition floods in: racist lawmen of a certain age and time, kinsmen of the bully cops of Birmingham and Montgomery and Selma.
I know these men, or the men like them who were my neighbors, my uncles, my friends' fathers and our Sunday school teachers and scoutmasters. When I was growing up in Mississippi, they would say such appalling things about black people that even to remember 40 or 50 years later causes my gorge to rise. Yet I also know that when they weren't spewing racist filth, they could be men one could respect and even love. It was as if, in the lives of these men, a tributary of human feeling had been dammed, grown stagnant and polluted, and its foulness had seeped out and corrupted a mainstream that should have run clear.
Hendrickson has noted this paradox, too: ''In the South, as has been observed, people who aren't victims of injustice often are victims of irony.'' Is it any wonder that so many Mississippians have written so much good fiction?
If we look at any image long enough, it begins to ''tease us out of thought,'' as Keats put it when he tried to wrest the secrets from the figures on his Grecian urn. And something kept Hendrickson looking at this image: ''I wanted to know: How did these seven white Southerners get to be this way, and how did it all end, or how is it still going on, and was there no eventual shame here, and what happened to their progeny, especially their progeny, and was it all just ineluctable?''
It seems that no one spends much time in Mississippi without trying to write like Faulkner, resorting to words like ''progeny'' and ''ineluctable.'' And Hendrickson spent a lot of time in Mississippi trying to answer the questions raised by this picture. Context is everything, but contexts have contexts, ad infinitum. Especially when you're dealing with something so integral to the American experience -- so, yes, ineluctable -- as racial conflict.
For seven years, Hendrickson searched through the contexts of this image. Most of the men in the picture were dead, but their families, as well as the two surviving men, sat down to talk with him in that generous but wary way that Southerners have. The survivors were defensive but not apologetic, Hendrickson tells us: ''Anything in the direction of atonement or expiation -- even if never named that or understood as such -- has been left to sons, or to sons of sons, or to sons of sons of sons.''
And so the most poignant profiles in his book are of the grandsons of two of the men. John Cothran's grandfather is the man with the armband in the photo, then the sheriff in the Mississippi Delta town of Greenwood. The grandson is a man with anger-management problems that wrecked three marriages before he was 30, a high school dropout who works as a supervisor at a Home Depot, a job that gives him more stress than gratification.
Ty Ferrell's grandfather is the man with the stick, Billy Ferrell, the sheriff in Natchez -- a job that Ty's father, Tommy, now holds. Ty has followed in the family profession, but not in Mississippi -- he's a Border Patrol agent, working out of El Paso, and is so deeply conflicted about what he's doing that it sometimes brings him close to tears in his conversations with Hendrickson. Ty exhibits ''what seemed like existential torment, as if he were meant to be a roiling repository for so many unnamed, unclaimed Ferrell family shames.''
Hendrickson understands the pain of John Cothran and Ty Ferrell, which makes the profiles of the grandsons more affecting than those of the men who appear in the photo. For Hendrickson never succeeds in answering the first of his questions: How did they get to be this way? ''It's so puzzling that a land of such charm and physical beauty, a people of such natural grace and disposition to kindness, could have so appalling a history,'' Hendrickson muses. How did a bigotry so pathological take hold of an entire region?
The best Hendrickson can do is to cite ''The Mind of the South,'' W.J. Cash's 1941 classic, in which Cash, a Southern journalist, wrote of a ''crisis of white masculinity'': ''The ultimate and as-yet-unrealized expression of the overthrow of slavery in the white male mind would be the destruction of the white sexual order.'' So Hendrickson asks about the men in the picture, ''Is it too much to suggest that there may be a faint undertone of sexualized tension in their faces?''
What I see in this picture I have seen in locker rooms and committee meetings and other all-male gatherings, where testosterone speaks to testosterone and the old primate emerges. But what I also see are the products of a closed system, of a place where opinions went unchallenged by other ways of thinking, to the point that prevailing attitudes could be swaddled in a communal bigotry. (There are many other places like this in the world, which makes understanding the Mississippi experience all the more crucial.)
By far the most potent figure in Hendrickson's book is a man who doesn'tappear in the photograph: James Meredith, who shattered the monolithic system of racial repression -- if it could happen in Mississippi, it could happen anywhere.
But Meredith stepped out to his own drummer -- after his graduation from Ole Miss, he stubbornly refused to align with any civil rights organization, starting his own solitary crusade for voting rights, including a one-man march through Mississippi during which he was almost assassinated. Later, he would shock and appall even those who had regarded him as a hero: He took a job as an aide to Sen. Jesse Helms and endorsed ex-Klansman David Duke's candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination -- Meredith even volunteered to be Duke's running mate. Hendrickson's interviews with Meredith only reinforce his reputation for eccentricity.
As the 40th anniversary of Meredith's entrance to Ole Miss approached, his son, Joe, quietly enrolled in a Ph.D. program in business at the university. Joe, who had graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, seems puzzled by his father, too. He tells Hendrickson, ''My father has an overwhelming need to be famous and so will do whatever he thinks will provide that and get him attention -- Jesse Helms, David Duke, you name it, even if it's only for a day.''
''Sons of Mississippi'' feels like a substantial, maybe even essential, contribution to our understanding not only of Southern racism, but also of the ways that the past can mark and mar. The book is sometimes over-reported -- not every detail of Joe Cothran's messy, mundane life is worth telling, for example. And complexities sometimes overwhelm Hendrickson -- his book occasionally seems like several very good magazine articles struggling to get out of the stack of paper in which they're buried.
But Hendrickson is a humane observer who can disarm the reader's impatience. And he's clearly on a mission -- you don't spend seven years researching a book if you're not. As he puts it, ''In Mississippi, nothing ever changes, and everything always changes, and sometimes it seems as if God put Mississippi on earth purely for our moral and confounding contemplation.''
July 20, 2022
“On the morning I checked out, I went down to ask the desk clerk if I could see a copy of the bill before paying it, since I’d made a lot of long-distance calls and wanted to be sure the charges were correct. I looked at the sheet and saw the word ‘Foreign’ written alongside amounts for $1.24, $2.47, and $8.51. But this can’t be right, sir’, I said. ‘I didn’t make any international calls’. ‘Oh, that just means out-of-state calls’, he said.”
There is a photograph. It’s from Life magazine, September 27, 1962.
It depicts seven sheriffs from around all of Mississippi who, along with others, have descended on the University of Mississippi campus.
The man in the middle, Sheriff Billy Ferrell, is laughing while swinging a club. The sheriffs around him, look equally amused.
In three days, after several failed attempts by a black student named James Meredith to enter the University, there will be a riot. Many will be hurt, several will die, and everyone involved including Meredith, Ferrel, the other sheriffs, and all of their descendants, will feel its reverberations long after the last brick was thrown and the last fire put out.
There are many books about the Civil Rights movement, even about the riot on the Ole Miss campus (although that seminal event seems to have faded more into memory), but Hendrickson asks a question here that is less often asked, what are the longer term consequences of such virulent hate?
Long after legislation is passed and those who were there have passed as well, does the perpetrators hate flow down to their sons?
And what of the victims? Does their pain, their frustrations and anguish, find its way into the next generation?
In Hendrickson’s profiles of these men, the answer is like the events of that time, murky.
Some are almost tragically unapologetic for the sins of their fathers. Not ready to acknowledge that they are sins at all. In others, you can feel the burden in their words, in the directions their lives have turned.
It is perhaps easy to feel some sympathy for these men who are not responsible for the actions of their fathers and grandfathers but perhaps the most sympathetic character for me is James Meredith himself.
Try as we might, it is beyond human comprehension to imagine what life was like for him as the only black student there. Trays constantly slamming on tables as he ate in the cafeteria, federal marshals assigned to him discovering daily new caches of weapons stored in Meredith’s proximity as well as constant threats to his life.
Knowing this, can we forgive the Meredith who after graduation would become increasingly erratic and grandiose as the spotlight faded around him culminating in his becoming a clerk for Jessie Helms? Did the daily and unbearable pressure he was under cause something within him to just not be able to cope with it anymore later in life?
Meredith’s sons in their own way, even out of their father’s shadow in relative anonymity, each struggled in their own way with his complex legacy.
It is perhaps too spot on to quote Faulkner on the past not even being past when talking about the legacy of racism in Mississippi but when thinking about the lives of these sheriffs gathered together on a sunny September afternoon, and their descendants, one can only hope that a grandson, a great grandson, a granddaughter, will someday look at their legacy and decide that this is the moment and time and the hate stops with them.
April 28, 2012
In concept, this book was interesting. It tells the story of seven Mississippi sheriffs, captured in a Life Magazine photo, shortly before the race riot over the integration of the University of Mississippi ("Ole Miss"). The author examines the lives of each racist sheriff (some in more detail than others), and then traces the evolution of their racist attitudes forward through the next generations of their families.
Unfortunately, in execution, this book falls short. As an initial matter, the lives of the individuals in the photo simply were not that interesting. While they were sheriffs during an interesting time, the men themselves did little of significance and for the most part, did little to leave a mark on history. Their brethren were even more insignificant, amounting to nothing more than average Joes and Janes. This makes for dull storytelling, and I found myself struggling to stay engaged throughout the book.
In addition, the book was poorly organized, jumping around from person to person and family to family. This made it difficult to discern whatever point Hendrickson was trying to make.
In short, if you are looking for a book on race relations in Mississippi from the 1960s forward, there are likely better vehicles for that subject. Nevertheless, Mr. Hendrickson does deserve some credit for identifying a novel framework within which to tell that story.
Unfortunately, in execution, this book falls short. As an initial matter, the lives of the individuals in the photo simply were not that interesting. While they were sheriffs during an interesting time, the men themselves did little of significance and for the most part, did little to leave a mark on history. Their brethren were even more insignificant, amounting to nothing more than average Joes and Janes. This makes for dull storytelling, and I found myself struggling to stay engaged throughout the book.
In addition, the book was poorly organized, jumping around from person to person and family to family. This made it difficult to discern whatever point Hendrickson was trying to make.
In short, if you are looking for a book on race relations in Mississippi from the 1960s forward, there are likely better vehicles for that subject. Nevertheless, Mr. Hendrickson does deserve some credit for identifying a novel framework within which to tell that story.
July 30, 2022
In 1962, a group of Mississippi sheriffs were photographed as they talked and waited on the Ole Miss campus. The picture appeared in Life magazine, a random sort of shot chronicling the build- up to the riot that took place a few days later, when James Meredith, the first Black student in history, began his studies..
The sheriffs were there to protect the campus from the federal troops who'd been sent to guarantee his safety.
Paul Hendrickson, looking at this picture many years later, decided to find out just who these men were...what their lives were like, how they were regarded in their own communities, what might have inspired them to stand up against integration in such a public way.
Drawn from hundreds of interviews and thorough research, the first part of Hendrickson's book tells the stories of these men, noting that more than one had been involved with the investigation into the death of Emmett Till just a few years earlier. All, by the way, were beloved by those around them.
The next part of the book delves into the life of James Meredith, the lone Black man who came to Ole Miss, went to class, wrote his papers, and graduated. This part, however, gives insight into what inspired him and what he did after this period of time. He was a lifelong Republican, by the way, who worked for Jesse Helms and with David Duke.
The last part of the book focuses on the legacies bestowed by these man, on how their lives, attitudes, and actions affected their sons and grandsons.
For many years, racism was at the core of Mississippi society, defining not only opportunity but identity. This book explores its omniscience, helping to explain a state that still ranks well below other states in its citizens' education and opportunity, a state so glisteningly beautiful that most who leave long to return, even now.
The sheriffs were there to protect the campus from the federal troops who'd been sent to guarantee his safety.
Paul Hendrickson, looking at this picture many years later, decided to find out just who these men were...what their lives were like, how they were regarded in their own communities, what might have inspired them to stand up against integration in such a public way.
Drawn from hundreds of interviews and thorough research, the first part of Hendrickson's book tells the stories of these men, noting that more than one had been involved with the investigation into the death of Emmett Till just a few years earlier. All, by the way, were beloved by those around them.
The next part of the book delves into the life of James Meredith, the lone Black man who came to Ole Miss, went to class, wrote his papers, and graduated. This part, however, gives insight into what inspired him and what he did after this period of time. He was a lifelong Republican, by the way, who worked for Jesse Helms and with David Duke.
The last part of the book focuses on the legacies bestowed by these man, on how their lives, attitudes, and actions affected their sons and grandsons.
For many years, racism was at the core of Mississippi society, defining not only opportunity but identity. This book explores its omniscience, helping to explain a state that still ranks well below other states in its citizens' education and opportunity, a state so glisteningly beautiful that most who leave long to return, even now.
July 25, 2024
1962 wollte sich der junge Amerikaner James Meredith an der Universität von Mississippi einschreiben. Dieses Vorhaben führe zu bewaffneten Aufständen, denn in den Augen der Meisten hatte James die falsche Hautfarbe. Unter denjenigen, die James Meredith aufhalten wollen, sind sieben Männer, die durch den Fotograf Charles Moore für die Vergangenheit festgehalten wurden.
Man sieht den sieben Männern nicht an, zu welchem Zweck sie sich versammelt haben. Auch wenn einer von ihnen einen Baseballschläger schwingt, wirken sie doch eher als ob sie auf einem Picknick wären. Wirklich nah dran waren sie ohnehin nicht am Geschehen, trotzdem gehören ihre Gesichter zu denen, an die man sich am meisten erinnert.
Paul Hendrickson beschäftige sich mit den Männern, Kindern und Enkeln. Er will wissen, ob die sieben wirklich so rassistisch waren, dass sie sich an diesem Tag zur Universität begeben haben oder ob sie sich nur von der Stimmung haben mitreißen lassen und ob sie ihre Einstellung an die Kinder weiter gegeben haben.
Es war schwer, einen genauen Eindruck von den sieben Männern zu bekommen. Was über sie gesagt wurde, egal ob aus der Familie oder von Bekannten, war überraschend verschwommen. Vieles wurde angedeutet, aber nur wenig wirklich ausgesprochen. Der stärkste Eindruck war der, das vieles schöngeredet wurde. Rassismus war und ist noch immer vorhanden, aber nur bei den anderen. In der eigenen Familie "war es nicht so schlimm". Nur einer der Söhne hatte deutlichere Worte, aber auch bei denen klang etwas wie Überraschung durch, dass er diese Aussage wirklich trifft.
James Meredith hat mich überrascht. Er schien nicht nur von den Tumulten, die sein Handeln verursacht hat, völlig unbeeindruckt: auch er hat das Verhalten der Studenten ihm gegenüber schön geredet. Was er rückblickend darüber gesagt, wirkt ähnlich verschwommen wie die Aussagen der Familien der sieben Männer.
Auch der Rest des Buchs war ähnlich verschwommen. Die damalige Zeit war sicherlich interessant, aber das konnte mir Paul Hendrickson nicht vermitteln. Er hat über mehreren Ecken einen persönlichen Bezug zu den Ereignissen, aber auch das erwähnt er nur nebenbei. Vielmehr verzettelt er sich in Kleinigkeiten und Wiederholungen.
Das alles hat gemacht, dass mir die Lektüre schwer gefallen ist. Ich fand das Buch langatmig. Auch wenn das Thema immer noch aktuell ist, konnte mir Hendrickson diese Wichtigkeit nicht vermitteln.
Man sieht den sieben Männern nicht an, zu welchem Zweck sie sich versammelt haben. Auch wenn einer von ihnen einen Baseballschläger schwingt, wirken sie doch eher als ob sie auf einem Picknick wären. Wirklich nah dran waren sie ohnehin nicht am Geschehen, trotzdem gehören ihre Gesichter zu denen, an die man sich am meisten erinnert.
Paul Hendrickson beschäftige sich mit den Männern, Kindern und Enkeln. Er will wissen, ob die sieben wirklich so rassistisch waren, dass sie sich an diesem Tag zur Universität begeben haben oder ob sie sich nur von der Stimmung haben mitreißen lassen und ob sie ihre Einstellung an die Kinder weiter gegeben haben.
Es war schwer, einen genauen Eindruck von den sieben Männern zu bekommen. Was über sie gesagt wurde, egal ob aus der Familie oder von Bekannten, war überraschend verschwommen. Vieles wurde angedeutet, aber nur wenig wirklich ausgesprochen. Der stärkste Eindruck war der, das vieles schöngeredet wurde. Rassismus war und ist noch immer vorhanden, aber nur bei den anderen. In der eigenen Familie "war es nicht so schlimm". Nur einer der Söhne hatte deutlichere Worte, aber auch bei denen klang etwas wie Überraschung durch, dass er diese Aussage wirklich trifft.
James Meredith hat mich überrascht. Er schien nicht nur von den Tumulten, die sein Handeln verursacht hat, völlig unbeeindruckt: auch er hat das Verhalten der Studenten ihm gegenüber schön geredet. Was er rückblickend darüber gesagt, wirkt ähnlich verschwommen wie die Aussagen der Familien der sieben Männer.
Auch der Rest des Buchs war ähnlich verschwommen. Die damalige Zeit war sicherlich interessant, aber das konnte mir Paul Hendrickson nicht vermitteln. Er hat über mehreren Ecken einen persönlichen Bezug zu den Ereignissen, aber auch das erwähnt er nur nebenbei. Vielmehr verzettelt er sich in Kleinigkeiten und Wiederholungen.
Das alles hat gemacht, dass mir die Lektüre schwer gefallen ist. Ich fand das Buch langatmig. Auch wenn das Thema immer noch aktuell ist, konnte mir Hendrickson diese Wichtigkeit nicht vermitteln.
December 13, 2018
"On judgement day, all the slain bodies from all the fevered and silted Mississippi waters will rise as one."
I read this for a college course on Mississippi literature.
Many sections of this book are intriguing, particularly the account with James Meredith, his sons, and the descendants of the men in the cover's photograph. There are few things as convoluted and distressing as the cognitive dissonance found within white Southern communities--the way so many of these younger white men would say something that gives the reader the slightest hope that the arc of the moral universe truly does bend toward justice, and then suddenly revoke the hope with a slur or some other racially aggressive slip-up that reveals the truth.
This certainly reads like a pre-Trump era book (because it is), and it's important for current readers to keep this fact in mind. My class and I were tempted to say Well We Been Knew about so much of this racism-related material, but the truth is that much of white America was (and still is) ignorant to the truths in this book. On another level, this book is difficult to read when so much of our current conversations concern voice and WHO gets their voices shared. Much of Hendrickson's book is about racist people saying racist things with varied amounts of regret or self-consciousness. I spent much of my reading time wondering what the value was in reading something about racists when I could read something more enlightening by a black author.
Structural elements I would have changed about Sons of Mississippi are the length and its pull-quality. I was only expected to read certain chapters of the book for my class, and I ended up finishing it simply because I had spent money on it. If it had been shorter, more concise, and written in a more absorptive fashion, I would have gotten through it faster and remembered more about the specific people interviewed, rather than just about those who seemed most fascinating, like the Ty Ferrel or Joe Meredith.
Hendrickson did an astounding amount of research for Sons of Mississippi. It's quite an admirable feat.
I read this for a college course on Mississippi literature.
Many sections of this book are intriguing, particularly the account with James Meredith, his sons, and the descendants of the men in the cover's photograph. There are few things as convoluted and distressing as the cognitive dissonance found within white Southern communities--the way so many of these younger white men would say something that gives the reader the slightest hope that the arc of the moral universe truly does bend toward justice, and then suddenly revoke the hope with a slur or some other racially aggressive slip-up that reveals the truth.
This certainly reads like a pre-Trump era book (because it is), and it's important for current readers to keep this fact in mind. My class and I were tempted to say Well We Been Knew about so much of this racism-related material, but the truth is that much of white America was (and still is) ignorant to the truths in this book. On another level, this book is difficult to read when so much of our current conversations concern voice and WHO gets their voices shared. Much of Hendrickson's book is about racist people saying racist things with varied amounts of regret or self-consciousness. I spent much of my reading time wondering what the value was in reading something about racists when I could read something more enlightening by a black author.
Structural elements I would have changed about Sons of Mississippi are the length and its pull-quality. I was only expected to read certain chapters of the book for my class, and I ended up finishing it simply because I had spent money on it. If it had been shorter, more concise, and written in a more absorptive fashion, I would have gotten through it faster and remembered more about the specific people interviewed, rather than just about those who seemed most fascinating, like the Ty Ferrel or Joe Meredith.
Hendrickson did an astounding amount of research for Sons of Mississippi. It's quite an admirable feat.
October 9, 2017
Fantastic look down the dynasty of a famous photograph of mainly Mississippi Sherif's prior to the 62 riot over admission of a black man to Ole-Miss: University of Mississippi. An superb story of how a culture and political position transition down 3 or 4 generations. A collection of stories of 'real-lives' this isn't a riveting thriller, but at the end you really get a sense of what the author was saying, that almost defies words.
Most interestingly to me was that James Meredith didn't identify with the civil rights movement. History is murky and we tend to overlook some characters, like James, that don't fit our narrative. What comes out most in this book is the ordinary lives and approaches, viewpoints and considerations that elude more grandiose attempts.
This book is real. If you want to get a 'feel' for some of the characters around 60s and into the present and how the past is present, this is the book for you.
Most interestingly to me was that James Meredith didn't identify with the civil rights movement. History is murky and we tend to overlook some characters, like James, that don't fit our narrative. What comes out most in this book is the ordinary lives and approaches, viewpoints and considerations that elude more grandiose attempts.
This book is real. If you want to get a 'feel' for some of the characters around 60s and into the present and how the past is present, this is the book for you.
July 10, 2022
(3.5 stars) This work looks at the men behind one of the more infamous photographs from the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s, as these law enforcement types are preparing for the showdown at Ole Miss, where James Meredith is about to attend as the first African-American. From there, the author follows the lives of those men, Meredith and their families. For some, life turned out ok, others struggled. Most of the men and their families did not repent of their actions and beliefs conveyed in that photo.
The work jumps a little bit, as it tries to cover the lives of the men in the photo, the Meredith family, and the larger Civil Rights struggle. Emmitt Till is referenced a great deal, but it doesn’t really add to the specific story of these men. It sets context, but sometimes, a work like this can try to go too big on context. It is a good story and solidly written, but it does try to reach little too much. A decent read, but maybe not worth a purchase.
The work jumps a little bit, as it tries to cover the lives of the men in the photo, the Meredith family, and the larger Civil Rights struggle. Emmitt Till is referenced a great deal, but it doesn’t really add to the specific story of these men. It sets context, but sometimes, a work like this can try to go too big on context. It is a good story and solidly written, but it does try to reach little too much. A decent read, but maybe not worth a purchase.
August 14, 2025
When we talk about race, race relations, civil rights and how such terrible events that happened in the past came to happen, we often do so from an abstract place, using opinion and our own personal views.
In Ghosts of Mississippi, Hendrickson personalizes the matter in a way that may help those born outside of a place like Mississippi understand that such difficult issues aren’t always black and white, or able to be seen with a perspective until you’re able to take a step, or two back.
I really liked the way he approached the research, weaving historical content into a sense of storytelling about the men in the photo which is the basis of his curiosity.
One of I think a handful of books that explores racism in the south with an appropriate level of context, written by someone not FROM the south.
In Ghosts of Mississippi, Hendrickson personalizes the matter in a way that may help those born outside of a place like Mississippi understand that such difficult issues aren’t always black and white, or able to be seen with a perspective until you’re able to take a step, or two back.
I really liked the way he approached the research, weaving historical content into a sense of storytelling about the men in the photo which is the basis of his curiosity.
One of I think a handful of books that explores racism in the south with an appropriate level of context, written by someone not FROM the south.
March 26, 2018
Hendrickson’s well researched recounting of the lives of seven Mississippi lawmen in the 1960’s.
Hendrickson’s recounting of their stories as well as the history of Natchez and Oxford, MS shed much light on the legacy of racism, not just in MS but un the US.
The book peaks with the race riots that followed James Meredith’s registration to Ole Miss. The details surrounding this episode, which includes unethical activity by the federal government is stunning.
The author closes the final 3rd of the book covering the offspring of the lawmen as well as James Meredith through extensive interviews he did with all of them.
Great read.
Hendrickson’s recounting of their stories as well as the history of Natchez and Oxford, MS shed much light on the legacy of racism, not just in MS but un the US.
The book peaks with the race riots that followed James Meredith’s registration to Ole Miss. The details surrounding this episode, which includes unethical activity by the federal government is stunning.
The author closes the final 3rd of the book covering the offspring of the lawmen as well as James Meredith through extensive interviews he did with all of them.
Great read.
April 18, 2025
I did not think this book was as well-written as I had hoped, but it so took me into the world of civil rights that has been similar to my own journey. The picture this man used to begin his journey was a rabbit hole, and it seemed to all come from Emmett Till. I wished I had had the time, as he did, to stay in some of those places where he was, although I have been to many of them, to just watch and listen and meditate. I would have liked to have sat for an hour or so outside of the Bryant Grocery to see everyone who came by. I didn't actually walk the streets of Greenwood, although I drove through. This book was like a rumination, a long one, of what our history means.
February 25, 2022
it's very easy to forget how recent the civil rights movement was and how it is not distant relatives, but grandparents of modern americans who were active in this time. I think examining how these mentalities bleed through was very interesting.
I did, however, think there was a bit too much extraneous information about the modern families added in that didn't really add much, and I think the reading experience would've been much better without it
I did, however, think there was a bit too much extraneous information about the modern families added in that didn't really add much, and I think the reading experience would've been much better without it
April 10, 2018
The book was interesting learning about what happen to the sheriffs in the cover of this book. How racial attitudes effected their children later in life. You can look at the news today about racial problems in America. This country tries to hide too much. This is history now and we as a country will never heal until we confront the issues.
August 20, 2020
It read like I imagine a sweltering hot summer day in Mississippi. Slow, full of fanciful and vivid descriptions, tales which were probably mostly true, characters who had roles to play and places to be put in. All the while not being stereotypical. Enjoyable, but not great.
March 2, 2022
I got bogged down so I’m going to move on after reading about half this book. The profiles of Mississippi Law men in the 60’s is intriguing. The specifics of events in Mississippi, who was there, who said what….is not the reason I wanted to read the book. I’m glad I read what I did.
September 11, 2017
A bit slow moving but fascinating.
April 19, 2022
At times a truly vivid look into the world of the South and the issue of civil rights. Too often, the author projects himself into the story which is why I didn't rate it higher.
February 11, 2024
An interesting history, current picture, and look forward.
July 3, 2012
The author uses a picture by famed Civil-Rights photographer Charles Moore and riffs on it. He follows each one of the seven men in the photo, interviews peers and descendants, traces history of the towns where they each served as Sheriff or Deputy-Sheriff, and tries to tease out what the legacy of these seven actually is in today's world.
This is a tough narrative to glue together because he takes so many tangents - I am curious to see how he'll stick them all together at the end.
I like this book because 1. I learned a lot - about the chronology of Civil Rights history in Mississippi, and about Mississippi. 2. I like books that use a qualitative method in assessing actions, behavior, and consequences. This was a very thoughtful book. 3. He doesn't necessarily come up with conclusions - he leaves that up to the reader. He seemed at least somewhat open as to judgement about people; not so regarding events.
Curious: how does one feel knowing that what one will write about another person might not be what that person would like - especially after having been a guest in that person's home?
A surprise: how tormented James Meredith is/was. So very sad.
This is a tough narrative to glue together because he takes so many tangents - I am curious to see how he'll stick them all together at the end.
I like this book because 1. I learned a lot - about the chronology of Civil Rights history in Mississippi, and about Mississippi. 2. I like books that use a qualitative method in assessing actions, behavior, and consequences. This was a very thoughtful book. 3. He doesn't necessarily come up with conclusions - he leaves that up to the reader. He seemed at least somewhat open as to judgement about people; not so regarding events.
Curious: how does one feel knowing that what one will write about another person might not be what that person would like - especially after having been a guest in that person's home?
A surprise: how tormented James Meredith is/was. So very sad.
November 16, 2012
This is a book related to the Civil Rights movement of the Sixties in the deep South of Mississippi where James Meredith was the first black to enroll at the University of Mississippi. I was expecting to learn more about the story and its context within the broader Civil Rights movement so I was a little dissapointed. In a different twist, the author focuses on the lives of 7 individuals who appear in the photograph on the front cover of the book. They were all Mississippi lawmen and in a way represent the racist attitudes of the times. The author talks about who this relatively ordinary men were and what became of them. He talks about their families and how and what has changed in the attitudes of the South since that tumultuous time. The book mainly consists of his interviews with the surviving men and their relatives and families. His point is that change in attitudes takes time and that slowly those racist attitudes are fading away. It is more the stories of some individuals, rather than a history of some Civil Rights event.
December 1, 2017
As a newcomer to the US, I am perhaps more aware of the role of race here than I am in the UK. However, despite living here 2 years, was still at a loss a loss as to its' origins and why it occured here.
This book helped me see the American "South" in a new light. Gone are my perceptions that large sections of the old confederate south are your typical "KKK style bigots", but it has been replaced with a recognition that the racism that the African-American community experienced may well still be there.
Sure the burning crosses are gone but the "racism of the mind", the unspoken racism that most people are too ashamed to raise but which must still be presents among some, both in the North and in the South, is still very much alive and well in the US.
This book helped me see the American "South" in a new light. Gone are my perceptions that large sections of the old confederate south are your typical "KKK style bigots", but it has been replaced with a recognition that the racism that the African-American community experienced may well still be there.
Sure the burning crosses are gone but the "racism of the mind", the unspoken racism that most people are too ashamed to raise but which must still be presents among some, both in the North and in the South, is still very much alive and well in the US.
January 27, 2008
This book took a famous picture from Time magazine where you see a group of sherrifs standing in a circle with a billy club. The story behind the photo is that they are there to stop the integration of the University of Mississippi.
Well, the book isn't about the actual event. What it does is take each sherrif in the photo and tell their story, along with the story of the photographer and the man who first integrated UM.
Even better, the author follows the story of the children of each of these men. What ensues are stories of grace, fear, love, dominance and certified craziness.
Recommended!
Well, the book isn't about the actual event. What it does is take each sherrif in the photo and tell their story, along with the story of the photographer and the man who first integrated UM.
Even better, the author follows the story of the children of each of these men. What ensues are stories of grace, fear, love, dominance and certified craziness.
Recommended!
October 14, 2012
This is a powerfully woven story about a group of virulently racist Mississippi sheriffs (one being my neighbor in Natchez) who went to Ole Miss to oppose James Meredith's admittance -- and how their sons, and in some cases their sons, have dealt with the legacy of having the sheriffs' arrogant and angry stance captured for posterity in a Life magazine photo by Charles Moore. That said, the writing of this book is simply superb. I started underlining passages and expressions in pencil so that I can go back time and again to be inspired by Paul Hendrickson's supreme way with words. This is an exceptional, memorable read.
May 3, 2016
I found this to be an intriguing way to approach a historical event. It was well worth the read (and the $1 price tag at Big Lots). We all hear the stories that surround an event in history, but we rarely hear how those events affect events for years to come, and that's why this book is worth reading. It's an interesting look at a group of law men and their descendants, and how the choices they made at the time the photo was taken helped to shape all of the events that followed in their lives. I highly recommend this book.
partially-read
April 18, 2012This is not a proper review, just a note to myself that I abandoned this at page 127, in case I want to return to it later. The concept behind this book was really great. Unfortunately, the execution was way too tedious. Really a pity, since I wanted to love this book so much. He seemed to prefer including too much information even when that information is not all that interesting. The really interesting stuff gets lost in a sea of trivial details. A good editor could've cut this book down by about half.
February 1, 2013
Historical subject matter but not really a historical book (ie something written by a historian). I really didnt enjoy this book at first but as I got more into it it was a lot better. I really enjoyed the way the author went through the different elements of the one cover image, each explanation adding a new layer of meaning to his narrative. If I could I would give it a 3.5/5 but I don't think it merits a 4 from me.
August 9, 2009
What would have made an excellent essay was instead turned into an endless book(by endless I mean I didn't finish it) that starts out morally superior and bitter, shifts tones to add more perspective and give some background on other famous pictures and people of that era, then sort of rambles on. That's where I left it. I think I got what I needed from it.
November 22, 2009
The author uses the 1962 Life photo of several sheriffs from around Mississippi at the Ole Miss campus when James Meredith was trying to register and integrate the school. He researched each person in the photo and the legacy of hate that they handed down to their childrenand grandchildren. In addition, he researched the photographer and James Meredith's family. This is an interesting read.
November 3, 2010
I really liked the subject matter of this book. Using a photo taken by Civil RIghts photographer, Charles Moore, Paul Hendrickson tries to link the impact of the civil rights movement on the next two generations.
The conclusions he finds are startling. Change does not happen quickly. Great book for discussion.
The conclusions he finds are startling. Change does not happen quickly. Great book for discussion.
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