Silver Rights: The story of the Carter family's brave decision to send their children to an all-white school and claim their civil rights

by Constance Curry

This “sure-to-be-classic account of 1960s desegregation” (Los Angeles Times) tells the inspiring story of the Carters, black Mississippi sharecroppers who sent their children to integrate an all-white school system. “Silver Rights is pure gold!” (Julian Bond). Introduction by Marian Wright Edelman.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography

294 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 1995

Reviews

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Silver Rights In The Mississippi Delta

In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress mandated the desegregation of all public schools receiving Federal aid. Mississippi tried to "comply" with the law by a "Freedom of Choice" program which allowed students over a certain age and parents to designate the schools they wished to attend. While, perhaps, facially appealing, the "Freedom of Choice" program served as a means to intimidate blacks from attempting to register in what were at the time all-white schools. Those with the courage to do so faced danger to their livelihood, property, and persons. The "Freedom of Choice" program ultimately was invalidated through litigation.

Constance Curry's inspiring book "Silver Rights" (1995) tells the story of a family of black sharecroppers in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, Mae Bertha and Matthew Carter and seven of their thirteen children (all their children then of school age). The Carter's took the "Freedom of Choice" program at its word. In 1965, the seven children enrolled in the primary and secondary schools of Drew, Mississippi, a small town with a then-deserved reputation for violence and lawlessness. Ms. Curry worked as a field representative for the American Friends Service Committee from 1965-1975. She got to know the Carter family well and was instrumental in providing the assistance necessary to get them through their difficult times.

The book includes excellent pictures of life in the Mississippi Delta, for both white and black people, in the early to mid-twentieth century. The book shows a feel for the place, for sharecropping life on the farms and for life in the dusty towns, for the blues culture of the Delta, and for its history. The book offers substantial discussion of the notorious Emmett Till case and of other lynchings and of early attempts to organize civil rights activities in the Delta. Ms. Curry eloquently evokes the spirit of the Delta at the opening of her story:

"In trying to describe the Mississippi Delta, I seem to find only superlatives -- the flattest land, the blackest dirt, the hottest summers, the nicest people, the poorest people. In defining the delta's past and even its present, I am aware of these extremes and also of its incongruities: the violence and the peacefulness, the beauty and the ugliness, the stillness and the tension. It is a place complex almost beyond comprehension."

In telling her story, Ms. Curry lets her protagonists do most of the talking. The opening chapters set the stage and explain the Carter's ambitions for an education, and an end to the hardships of sharecropping, for their children. The second section of the book explores the background of Mae Bertha Carter and her mother Luvenia's early life as the wife of a Delta sharecropper. The book discusses throughout the experiences of the Carter family as they faced violence and shootings in the early stages following their enrollment in the formerly white schools. Throughout their period in the public schools the children endured harassment, name-calling and ostracism. The Carter family was forced off the plantation and Matthew Carter lost his job. The book shows the courage and perseverance of the family and the aid offered by the AFSC and other organizations.

The book includes interviews with each of the thirteen Carter children and discussions of the family members fared after their graduation from the public schools. There are some moving scenes when Ms. Curry reestablished contact with the Carter family in 1988, thirteen years after her work with the AFSC came to an end. Mae Bertha Carter remains determined and forceful and has received honors from institutions within the State of Mississippi that would have been unthinkable in the 1960s.

This book tells an important story of the silver rights movement. It is a work of both history and memory and describes beautifully the changes wrought with time.

Robin Friedman

[Lillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much of this book examines the life of Mae Bertha Carter and her children and their integration of the schools in Drew, Sunflower county, Mississippi in 1965. It is a story that perhaps can be told of many schools in the south and of the brave families that, through threats and intimidation were unafraid to exercise their new found civil rights. The most interesting part of this book is the story of Mae Bertha Carter and her marriage to Mathew Carter.She was a fearless woman, committed to her family, determined, persevering and dedicated to seeing that her children get the education they were entitled . Mathew Carter is portrayed as a supportive, gentle, caring man as dedicated to their 13 children and civil rights as Mae Bertha Carter, Most telling, to me, of their marriage was this statement by Mae Bertha.She said even after a stroke, in which he had lost the use of one arm, he continued to make the beds..because, "I am not good at making beds and I didn't like to so my husband made the beds for 46 years."
As well as a story of how one family fought for their rights; it is a story of an amazing partnership and the 13 successful, engaged children it produced despite, poverty, discrimination,racism and difficult times which stagger one's imagination.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm enjoying this book but have put it down for a while--it recounts the story of a Mississippi family and their children's experiences as the first black students to desegretate the formerly all-white schools in their county. Reading first-hand accounts of this period of history is pretty incredible, though at times startling to realize that these events occurred less than 50 years ago.

[Kathie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent book about a family that desegregated the white elementary and high school in a small urban town of Mississippi. They had just passed the Civil Rights bill and the Mississippi school board used something called "Freedom of choice" papers for parents to sign. Of course, if black parents wanted to send their children to white school, they put pressure on them in different ways. Many were share cropping for white land owners so they threatened eviction or wouldn't let them get credit for merchandise at stores. There were plenty of "legal"ways to keep people down. Bertha Mae Cater was determined that her seven children were never going to pick cotton. Her mother was a slave and she and her husband both share cropped on a cotton plantation. Their children were the only black children that went to the white schools in that area and the courage they are showed, when met with awful obstacles, is amazing. They all graduated and became productive citizens. It is a really wonderful memoir of the cruelty of some, the amazing charity of groups like the NAACP, individuals that cared and Quakers. Most of all it is a heartwarming story of courage and love in this family.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

An outstanding account of a the Carter family and its 13 children, many of whom were "first children" to enter a white school in the Mississippi Delta. The unacknowledged heroes in this story are of all races and classes--everyone should know these histories.

[Ginny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was so interesting. Although I was not from Drew, I am familiar with the town and county. I learned so much about Mississippi in the 60s. Things were not good, but I think we have grown and become better.

[Aaron Horton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very good book. I found out about this book from the free online class I took about from the Freedom Riders to Ferguson. Constance Curry did a good job talking about the Carter family. I would recommend this book.

[Marissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating account of a Mississippi African-American family's children exercising their rights to attend the "white" schools.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mae Bertha and Matthew Carter, African American sharecroppers on a cotton plantation in Sunflower County, Mississippi, wanted the best for their thirteen children. By 1965, the best education they could get for their children was in white schools in Drew. They didn't realize that the "freedom of choice" law that the Mississippi state legislature had recently passed was a ruse that allowed the state to appear as though it were complying with the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that ordered school integration. State legislators had said that black parents could have "freedom of choice" about which schools--black or white--in which to enroll their children, but were pretty sure that whites would be successful in intimidating blacks to keep them from attending white schools. The Carter family--who believed that education was the only way their kids could avoid being cotton-pickers all their lives--took the legislators at their word, and enrolled their seven youngest children in Drew elementary, junior high, and high schools (the older children had grown up and moved away). They had no idea that they would be the only black family in the area to do so. This story, told by a white American Friends Service Committee field representative who got to know the family well over many years, not only tells the story of the Carter kids' treatment at the hands of their white classmates and teachers, but traces their family back three generations, giving a fascinating picture of the conditions of African American life in Mississippi from slavery to the very recent past. It's also a tribute to the courage of the entire family, and to the skills of one particular math teacher that the Carter children had. Though she was a white southerner and segregationist, this teacher was also a fair-minded and demanding teacher. All seven Carter kids wound up graduating from the University of Mississippi, almost all of them in a math-related field.
Though this true story is well-written and well-researched, it suffers a bit by being told by someone outside the family. This quibble is allayed to some extent by the numerous letters from Mae Bertha Carter that are quoted in full or in part.
I particularly enjoyed reading the parts of the book that have to do with figures I've come to "know" from the Freedom Summer documents I've been reading lately. Ruth Carter, the Carters' oldest daughter (of the younger seven)and now-obscure civil rights advocates Amzie Moore, Willie Mae Johnson, and Leroy Johnson, appear in both places, enhancing the story for me.

[Kathy Piselli · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to read this book by Connie Curry, who has recently died, because I was interested in AFSC's work in this time and place. I worked for the Friends in the 80s and heard stories about this time. Unfortunately the program to assist blacks trying to desegregate white schools lost its funding in 1974 as the funder believed blacks desegregating schools were no longer being harassed so severely. To me that's like stopping your course of antibiotics because you start to feel better, but there were other problems to fund. As Curry tells the story of the Carter family on a Mississippi Delta plantation, decades of civil rights struggles are portrayed. Many of those born after those years don't really grasp what living under segregation meant. It was felt by Curry even before her work in the Delta - she was obliged for example while at Agnes Scott College to get parental permission to break the law by attending interracial meetings. Mae Bertha Carter, who once picked cotton alongside Fanny Lou Hamer, recalls being amused to pick for whites who seemed poorer than she was - these were whites who obtained their land under a New Deal resettlement program of the 30s. This is also the area where Emmett Till lost his life and his mother defiantly allowed her son's beaten body to be seen by mourners and newspaper photographers. Some strong tough women to be sure, and Curry captures it all in this extraordinary account.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not the best book I've read about the civil rights movement, but still manages to astonish with how things were so recently and how brave some people were and how cruel others were. The author worked for the AFSC providing support to courageous black families who were pushing for desegregation in the south. Noble work, but so risky for the black families. I wanted those white do-gooders to go and convince the whites to accept integration and not murder/ displace blacks. Has there ever been effective participation of white in defusing white racist violence?

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent history (written by a lovely patient of mine) of one family's struggle to single-handedly desegregate the schools in a Mississippi County in the 60s. So hard to believe this was only a few decades ago...

[Leah Steever · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a wonderful account of the black struggle in 1950-60's rural South (Mississippi to be exact). You'll fall in love with the Carter family as they become the first black family to integrate the local white school system.

[Annie Yang · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really don't like this book. It's very boring. Throughout the whole book, the author just had one event then another; theres no exciting part and it is very dull to me. I wouldn't advise you to read this book.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great if you are reading it for history only.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this while I was in law school. It was an extremely lively portrayal of life during the Civil Rights movement.