Rating: 
Summary: Thinking of Home
Review: Hendrickson takes a moment (frozen in a photograph on the eve of James Meridith's entry into Ole Miss in 1962) and builds a universe around it. I recognize the time, the people and the place. As a sixth generation Mississippian who lived through the era of the civil rights movement but then left never to really return, this book takes me home. Mississippi belongs to all of us and in some instinctive way we who are her sons, black and white, love her. The words quoted in this book from James Meridith captured that feeling --- "To me, Mississippi is the most beautiful country in the world in all seasons. In the spring, all is green and fresh, the air is clean and sweet, and everything is healthy ... I feel love because I have always felt that Mississippi belonged to me and one must love what is his." Time and again, Hendrickson took me to familiar places, caused me to laugh and to cry and made me remember "... how often I have lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home."
Rating:
Summary: Into the heart of the South
Review: It's at once a simple and brilliant premise: take a photo that is a literally a snapshot from our country's recent history and use it as a springboard into examining the soul of a region.
Paul Hendrickson's "Sons of Mississippi" works on many levels. It is an examination of James Meredith's integration of Ole Miss in 1962, of the state of Mississippi 40 years ago and today, it is a look at ordinary people swept up by extraordinary events. It is all that and so much more.
Hendrickson has taken a famous photo published in Life magazine of a group of Mississippi sheriffs just prior to demonstrations on the Ole Miss campus surrounding Meredith's entry and examined the lives of those in the photo and their progeny.
I was apprehensive about the book, concerned that it would be dry reading. Fortunately I couldn't have been more wrong. The author's exploration of the sheriffs, their families their communities their homes, is written in an engaging style that draws the reader into the Mississippi of yesterday and today. Much credit must go to Hendrickson for his ability to get interview subjects to speak so freely.
I'm often surprised at what books do or do not receive prestigious awards. I'd be shocked if "Sons of Mississippi" does not garner several honors.
Highly recommended for everyone, particularly those with interests in Civil Rights, race relations or Mississippi.
Rating:
Summary: Into the heart of the South
Review: It's at once a simple and brilliant premise: take a photo that is a literally a snapshot from our country's recent history and use it as a springboard into examining the soul of a region.
Paul Hendrickson's "Sons of Mississippi" works on many levels. It is an examination of James Meredith's integration of Ole Miss in 1962, of the state of Mississippi 40 years ago and today, it is a look at ordinary people swept up by extraordinary events. It is all that and so much more.
Hendrickson has taken a famous photo published in Life magazine of a group of Mississippi sheriffs just prior to demonstrations on the Ole Miss campus surrounding Meredith's entry and examined the lives of those in the photo and their progeny.
I was apprehensive about the book, concerned that it would be dry reading. Fortunately I couldn't have been more wrong. The author's exploration of the sheriffs, their families their communities their homes, is written in an engaging style that draws the reader into the Mississippi of yesterday and today. Much credit must go to Hendrickson for his ability to get interview subjects to speak so freely.
I'm often surprised at what books do or do not receive prestigious awards. I'd be shocked if "Sons of Mississippi" does not garner several honors.
Highly recommended for everyone, particularly those with interests in Civil Rights, race relations or Mississippi.
Rating: 
Summary: New revelations to an old story...Racism Revisited
Review: Lest we forget, the civil rights era and the horrors that it wrought still echoes and reverberates within us. Now comes a poignant reminder that there still are some closets that have stored secrets and are full of old ghosts. Paul Hendrickson braves the wrath and guilt of those that may want this sordid part of our history to continue to lie fallow. This is a story of Mississippi's pained past, one that is in the forefront of efforts to eradicate and ply for a new frame of reference. The author profiles seven Mississippi sheriffs photographed while one of their number showboats with a billy club in an apparent show of glee in beating a would be students' quest to integrate the University Of Mississippi. The real story about this book as more to do with telling the truth than hiding it. and the author uses the front cover picture on the book as metaphor to illustrate what transpired during this time, and the aftermath years later. The genesis of Hendrickson's curiosity about the picture gives rise to why he felt that there's more to tell about the men that perpetuated and fueled actions extolling the indelible image of racism for the times. His question was: Is racism a genetic thing? Could it be possible that the sons of the perpetrators are just as racist? In other words, How has it changed for the families that had to witness the shock and sorrow of their loved ones. Where did the hatred and remorse go that strengthened the viewpoints of these so-called law enforcers? The compelling point of it all is what is extracted from the sons and grandsons to feed the pages of this book. He follows the careers of the proponents up to their deaths, with the quips, quotes, and anecdotes condoning violence, and the various interviews with leading subjects of the day. He begins with a wrenching retelling of the Emmett Till lynching-seven years before James Meredith fought for and finally won admission to Ole Miss, a bloody story Hendrickson also recounts (in addition to a fascinating recent interview with Meredith himself). I found this part of the book revealing, and gave credence to the depths that Hendrickson took to solidify his research methodology. The book's final third tries to get at the legacy of Mississippi's particular brand of segregation, but tells us nothing that we don't already know. He tries to rectify quality by profiling the children of the men in the photo, and of Meredith, with sad and inconclusive results. While Hendrickson can be intrusive in telling readers how to interpret his subjects, he repeatedly comes up with issues that are repeated in previous and later sections of the book. The electric interview material, and deftly places these men did their horrors masterfully defines events of their times, and adds yet another chapter to this period that Mississippi would rather be left dead and buried. This book and story should not be looked down on, but should be placed among other books that endeavor to give some semblance of accord in understanding mindsets of a racist enclave.
Rating: 
Summary: Responding to "Don from New York, NY"
Review: Sir, I am also a New Yorker. I take issue with your assumption that someone writing a review with which you do not agree is a bigot, and further, that the bigot in question is a Southerner. P.S. "Southerner" is a proper noun and should be capitalized. Amazon, please remove or edit "Don's" offensive review.
Rating:
Summary: Responding to "Don from New York, NY"
Review: Sir, I am also a New Yorker. I take issue with your assumption that someone writing a review with which you do not agree is a bigot, and further, that the bigot in question is a Southerner. P.S. "Southerner" is a proper noun and should be capitalized. Amazon, please remove or edit "Don's" offensive review.
Rating:
Summary: Responding to "Don from New York, NY"
Review: Sir, I am also a New Yorker. I take issue with your assumption that someone writing a review with which you do not agree is a bigot, and further, that the bigot in question is a Southerner. P.S. "Southerner" is a proper noun and should be capitalized. Amazon, please remove or edit "Don's" offensive review.
Rating:
Summary: A journey into the past and the present
Review: The genesis of Sons of Mississippi is a photograph taken in 1962 on the campus of Ole Miss. A group of sheriffs gathered below a tree. They came to stop the registration of James Meredith, the first black student at the university. The sheriff in the middle of the photograph is swinging a bat. The others are standing in support. One sheriff on the left side of the photo is smiling in glee. He looks like the archetype redneck. Hendricks seeks out the men in the photos and their descendants in order to find out "what has come down" from what that photograph represents. What is the legacy of race in Mississippi and for these men and their families? Is their any redemption, any guilt, or are has nothing changed? Only two men in the photograph were still alive for Hendrickson to talk with, and despite hours of interviews they didn't say much about the big questions. No sign of regret. Too, polite he doesn't ask these men if they are still the people in the photograph - or their children for that matter. We are told that they weren't in the Klan. But then maybe they were. The truth is that the men in the photograph probably never wrestled with these questions - or the past - like Hendrickson does - and takes his readers do on the trip that he takes them. Most people are content to live the lives that they want to lead and if that means seeing other people suffer they learn to accept and live with that. That's just the way it is. When Hendrickson goes to the store that Emmit Till was murdered at he bumps into a man who says "the past is the pay and why stir it up and get folks thinking about things that can't be undone?" That is the attitude that most white southerners have about the history of race relations. In the town that I live in there were Civil Rights demonstrations and marches that were akin to what happened in Birmingham. There was a day called "bloody Sunday" and Martin Luther King came to town. He left in defeat so the story isn't told in most narrative histories of the Civil Rights movement. We are approaching the 40th anniversary of that summer. There is no marker to the marches or the beatings. In a poll our newspaper did last week they asked what should the city do for the 40th anniversary of the local civil rights demonstrations. 63% of the respondents said nothing. Hendrickon's book shows how in many ways attitudes have not changed since then. The times have changed. But the deep South isn't much different than anywhere else. There is always something somewhere that people find that they need to look away from. But by looking you learn something about the human condition. Suffering builds perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope. One person in the book makes the comment that the racists of Mississippi hated as a way to focus on something other than their own suffering. That meant turning away from their own humanity and becoming depraved. That is why this is a book worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: A good book is in here . . . somewhere
Review: The obvious problem with this book is that it wasn't edited at all. Mr. Hendrickson attempted to write with style, grace and Faulknerian passages. Instead, we get overly grotesque physical descriptions and biased portraits of biased men. Just when the writing starts to get to the facts of the matter, we get line after line after line after line (well you get the idea) of superfluous, novellic, beautiful, cloying prose. This is NOT a novel, Mr. Hendrickson! It was meant to be study in non-fiction. If more of the disjointed "literary" passages were deleted, more attention was paid to the facts, and the author made a decent attempt to be unbiased, this book would be a five start book. You write very well, Mr. Hendrickson, but please get a better editor.
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