| Deep South Dispatch: Memoir of a Civil Rights Journalist Contributor(s): Herbers, John N. (Author), Rosen, Anne Farris (With), Roberts, Gene (Foreword by) |
|
 |
ISBN: 1496828194 ISBN-13: 9781496828194 Publisher: University Press of Mississippi OUR PRICE: $22.50 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: March 2020 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Editors, Journalists, Publishers - Political Science | Civil Rights - History | United States - State & Local - South (al,ar,fl,ga,ky,la,ms,nc,sc,tn,va,wv) |
| Dewey: B |
| Physical Information: 0.66" H x 6" W x 9" (0.95 lbs) 292 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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 Dispatch: 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. |
