Deep South Dispatch: Memoir of a Civil Rights Journalist

Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography

by John Herbers, Gene Roberts (Foreword), Anne Farris Rosen (Contributor)

Former New York Times correspondent John N. Herbers (1923-2017), who covered the civil rights movement for more than a decade, has produced Deep South Memoir of a Civil Rights Journalist, a compelling story of national and historical significance. Born in the South during a time of entrenched racial segregation, Herbers witnessed a succession of landmark civil rights uprisings that rocked the country, the world, and his own conscience. Herbers's retrospective is a timely and critical illumination on America's current racial dilemmas and ongoing quest for justice.Herbers's reporting began in 1951, when he covered the brutal execution of Willie McGee, a black man convicted for the rape of a white housewife, and the 1955 trial for the murder of Emmett Till, a black teenager killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. With immediacy and first-hand detail, Herbers describes the assassination of John F. Kennedy; the death of four black girls in the Birmingham, Alabama, church bombing; extensive travels and interviews with Martin Luther King Jr.; Ku Klux Klan cross-burning rallies and private meetings; the Freedom Summer murders in Philadelphia, Mississippi; and marches and riots in St. Augustine, Florida, and Selma, Alabama, that led to passage of national civil rights legislation.This account is also a personal journey as Herbers witnessed the movement with the conflicted eyes of a man dedicated to his southern heritage but who also rejected the prescribed laws and mores of a prejudiced society. His story provides a complex understanding of how the southern status quo, in which the white establishment benefited at the expense of African Americans, was transformed by a national outcry for justice.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, History

270 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 12, 2018

Reviews

[Serge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good memoir of difficult civil rights assignments. Herbers offers behind the scenes details for the Emmet Till and Medgar Evers murders, the assassination of JFK, Freedom Summer, the 1963 Birmingham church bombing and Bloody Sunday in Selma. He offers lucid and compelling testimony for an era that is fast slipping into the historical recesses of our shared memory. In describing his motivation for taking real risks and enduring considerable burdens, Herbers writes "I had witnessed enough senseless thinking and brutal acts toward minorities to know, as hard as it was to accept, that the practices of my family and people in our small town were fallacies… The state needed competent, skeptical reporters who could, if nothing else, keep the record straight." His candor and humility contrasts with the bombast and hate of some of the figures he interviewed such as larger than life Senator James Eastland who pronounced on the floor of the Senate that "the doctrine of white supremacy, if adhered to, would save America." Eerie echo for a fractured age. Herbers defends journalistic objectivity ("“People asked me how I could watch the atrocities during the civil rights movement without taking a more vocal position. I believe that a good reporter is an observer who stands in the corner absorbing as much as can be heard or seen but never becoming partisan…. The search for truth requires an objective seeker, especially when that search goes against public opinion.”) while providing uncanny insight into the heart of the problem, this struggle for men's souls ("Desperately trying to maintain a system of black suppression, white segregationists created a world rife with rumor, fabrication, and paranoia"). He documents with clear eyes "the season of suffering."

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in the style of the life-long newspaperman that he was, Herbers takes the reader briefly through his early life and upbringing. His parents came from wealthy families but were themselves poor. They moved around frequently, running small groceries in different parts of the South, particularly Mississippi. Herbers had a happy childhood, served in the military in WW II, returned and got married, went to college on the GI Bill, and got a job as a reporter for UP in Mississippi.

This is where the book really gets moving as Herbers began covering the civil rights movement from a close perspective. He was always under pressure to get the story first and fast, despite a lack of resources. UP, and later UPI, had many subscribing newspapers throughout the South, and some were very unhappy with the coverage given to the civil rights movement. They wanted it downplayed, not featured, and often gave Herbers a hard time over it, especially after he became bureau chief in Jackson.

He moved the the NY Times. He was based initially in Atlanta, and describes how he was present at some many major events of the movement. In particular, he covered King in Montgomery and, most importantly, Selma. There's a lot of detail about the events which Herbers witnessed at close hand, even as Southern sheriffs were penning up reporters, mobs were threatening them, and violence was all around.

The book closes with a moving account by Herbers, now 90 and in an assisted living facility, having a reunion with 74 year old John Lewis. Together they looked back fifty years to the movement, to its many accomplishments, and to recent attempts to roll them back.

[Jim Pond · Rating 5 out of 5]

The memoir of John Norton Herbers, a reporter who was witness to the Civil Rights struggle from pre-Dr. King through the passage of the Voting Rights Act; a wonderful testimony to the bravery of the men and women of that era, including the unassuming Southerner who chronicled it all.

[LAMONT D · Rating 5 out of 5]

A FASCINATING AND INSIDE LOOK THROUGH THE EYES OF A JOURNALIST/REPORTER BORN AND RAISED IN THE SOUTH LIVING AND REPORTING THROUGH THE TURBELENT YEARS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOMENT. HE RECOUNTS FOR US HIS JOURNEY AND THE EYE WITNESS REPORTS THAT HE SAW AND EXPERIENCED IN PERSON AT SOME OF THE HISTORIC EVENTS IN THAT ERA (LATE 50'S AND EARLY 60'S). IF NOTHING ELSE IT IS A MUCH NEEDED HISTORY LESSON ON WHAT TRANSPIRED DURING THOSE DARK DAYS OF CIVIL UNREST WITH RACISM DISPLAYED AT ONE OF ITS STRONGEST POINTS IN OUR HISTORY.

[Josh Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gem of a book.

I just finished this book for the second time. The first time was in 2018 when the WSJ wrote a review and the book was released. Both times, when I finished, I held the book, savored it and thanked John for his life and effort he made in writing his memoirs. He passed after the book was accepted by the publisher, but before it was printed. It was a life well lived. His first hand account of the civil rights movement, his close relationship with King and Lewis should be remembered by the historic record. He covered the South from the earliest moments of the civil rights struggle, interviewing key figures, including the parents of Emmett Till, the parents of the girls killed in the Birmingham attack, to the marches in Selma.

This is a little known treasure of a book and I encourage readers to pick this up.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Herber's memoir spans an amazing time during the Civil Rights era, which culminates in passage of the voting rights act. The timing of this book strangely coincides with issues that are relevant today and show both how far we have come as a nation in addressing racism and segregation, its crippling impact on the country, and how far we have yet to go.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent historical and biographical book on journalism and the Civil Rights Movement. I read this pretty quickly because I enjoyed it.

[John Baxter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb memoir of a reporter's life during the Civil Rights Movement. Herbers is up close and personal with many of the players, good and bad.

[Marie L · Rating 4 out of 5]

written by the father of one of Julia's UMd professors; very interesting