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"Mighty Mississippi is a stirring account of the conflict over the great river at the heart of the nation, a conflict between water and rail, full of the violence of an earlier America. The author gives us, out of his own background on the Mississippi, something of the magic and mystery of Mark Twain and an era long gone. It is a saga of America, and the reader who begins it will find it impossible to put it down." -- Senator Charles Percy, Illinois....
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"Jesmyn Ward's universally acclaimed memoir shines a light on the community she comes from, in the small town of DeLisle, Mississippi, a place of quiet beauty and fierce attachment. Here, in the space of four years, she lost five young men dear to her, including her beloved brother--to accidents, murder, and suicide. Their deaths were seemingly unconnected, yet their lives had been connected, by identity and place, and as Jesmyn dealt with these losses,...
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"Mississippi. 1966. On a hot June afternoon an African-American man named James Meredith set out to walk through his home state, intending to fight racism and fear with his feet. A seemingly simple plan, but one teeming with risk. Just one day later Meredith was shot and wounded in a roadside ambush. Within twenty-four hours, Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, and other civil rights leaders had taken up Meredith's cause, determined to overcome...
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The author grew up in the woods of Mississippi amid poverty, hunger, fear, and hatred. He lied, stole, and raged at those around him; at six he was a "drunkard", hanging about in taverns. Surly, brutal, cold, suspicious, and self-pitying, he was surrounded on one side by whites who were either indifferent to him, pitying, or cruel, and on the other side by blacks who resented anyone trying to rise above the common law. This is the author's powerful...
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She was born the 20th child in a family that had lived in the Mississippi Delta for generations, first as enslaved people and then as sharecroppers. She left school at 12 to pick cotton, as those before her had done, in a world in which white supremacy was an unassailable citadel. She was subjected without her consent to an operation that deprived her of children. And she was denied the most basic of all rights in America - the right to cast a ballot...
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With endearing humor and unabashed compassion, Willie Morris—a self-declared dog man and author of the classic paean to canine kind, My Dog Skip—reveals the irresistible story of his unlikely friendship with a cat. Forced to confront a lifetime of kitty-phobia when he marries a cat woman, Willie discovers that Spit McGee, a feisty kitten with one blue and one gold eye, is nothing like the foul felines that lurk in his nightmares.
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"On June 5, 1966, the civil rights hero James Meredith left Memphis, Tennessee, on foot. Setting off toward Jackson, Mississippi, he hoped his march would promote Black voter registration and defy racism. The next day, he was shot by a mysterious white man and transferred to a hospital. What followed was one of the key dramas of the civil rights era ... Tracking rural demonstrators' courage and impassioned debates among movement leaders, [the author]...
12) Fannie Lou Hamer
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Fannie Lou Hamer is specifically written to meet the needs of adolescents and adults who are reluctant readers. The photographs, maps, and illustrations reflect the text, making the words easy to decode. This high-interest, low-vocabulary biography is ideal for English as a Second Language or adult basic education students. Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) grew up in the South at the time of the Jim Crow laws. "Sick and tired" of being treated like a...
17) Black Boy
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A special 75th anniversary edition of Richard Wright's powerful and unforgettable memoir, with a new foreword by John Edgar Wideman and an afterword by Malcolm Wright, the author's grandson.
When it exploded onto the literary scene in 1945, Black Boy was both praised and condemned. Orville Prescott of the New York Times wrote that "if enough such books are written, if enough millions of people read them maybe, someday, in the fullness of time, there...
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Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the Freedom Summer murders, traces the events surrounding the KKK lynching of three young civil rights activists who were trying to register African Americans for the vote.
In June of 1964, three idealistic young men (one black and two white) were lynched by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. They were trying to register African Americans to vote as part of the Freedom Summer effort to bring democracy to...
19) Southern pride
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The story of two small towns in Mississippi planning their inaugural Gay Pride in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election. Months of preparation yield fundraising fiascos, unexpected road repairs, and indifferent spring breakers. But the power of community should never be underestimated, and the brave efforts of the two gay bars are an inspiring example of real Southern pride.
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Inthe tradition of Jeanette Walls' TheGlass Castle and Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants, novelist Minrose Gwin offers a beautifullycrafted memoir of rediscovering her mother, the mentally ill poet Erin Taylor, after a life of growing up with her in the South. In an intimate, surprising, emotional, and ultimately uplifting journey into her mother's past, Gwin, the critically acclaimed author of The Queen ofPalmyra, offers both a daughter'ssoulful elegy...