A Small Town Rises: A Sharecropper and a College Girl Join the Struggle for Justice in Shaw, Mississippi

by Lee Anna Sherman

"A story of daring in a time of great danger ... of two unknown heroes working for justice."--Dennis Flannigan, Washington State Representative, 2002-2010 Part biography, part history, part love story, A Small Town Rises chronicles the lives of two civil rights activists who met in the tiny cotton town of Shaw at the tail end of the Mississippi Summer Project, the voting-rights campaign known as Freedom Summer. Shaw was, like countless segregated towns across the South, a pressure cooker of violent white resistance to the growing civil rights movement. The two young freedom fighters--sharecropper Eddie Short and recent college grad Mary Sue Gellatly--joined forces in 1964 with local black activist Andrew Hawkins and a host of courageous townspeople to challenge and disrupt the status quo in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. Their struggle brought triumph and tragedy to Shaw in equal measure.

Genres: History, Biography

434 pages, Paperback

Published January 10, 2020

Reviews

[Kim]

For every Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, and Fannie Lou Hammer, there are hundreds—no, thousands—of unsung heroes of the Civil Rights Movement whose stories we will never know. Fortunately, Lee Anna Sherman has learned and shared the stories of Eddie Short, who was a Mississippi sharecropper, and Mary Sue Gellatly, an Oregonian who’d recently graduated from college. Together they worked to expand voter registration and education for African American people during the 1964 Freedom Summer and beyond. At great personal risk and with stakes as high as they could be, Eddie and Mary Sue dedicated their lives to making America live up to its creed that all are created equal. This book is a wonderful reminder of the importance of the ballot box and of the people who worked and sacrificed to make it available to ALL.

[Christopher Renberg]

Full disclosure: I know the Short family from my early years growing up in Waukesha and received my (paid for by me) copy from them.
This is a phenomenal story of resilience and fortitude and all the superlatives you can imagine. It takes the civil rights struggle and zeroes in on two folks in a small Mississippi town. That only serves to magnify all they went through because it is personal and very local. The Eddie and Mary Sue I knew as a boy were full of life and laughter (and good pool shooting), but it was a long path to get there. I am honored I know them and sit in awe of their life story.
Kudos to the author as well for just letting an incredible story unfold. I recommend this book for anyone interested in strong people fighting for what is right.
P.S. I was also able to add a Little Milton song to my playlist that i was not familiar with so it was a winner all around!

[Doranne Long]

Now is the time to read this book as Lee Anna Sherman skillfully chronicles civil rights activities in the 1960's. Lee provides us with a fantastic history lesson/education. The facts are literally presented in black and white, including photos. She provides exquisite details of life, in the south in the '60's, including sights, sounds, smells, and almost tastes. She compares and contrasts sharecropper Eddie Short and Mary Sue Gellatly, from Portland Oregon, as they worked together in Shaw Mississippi in the summer of 1964.