First published 2003
Paul Hendrickson begins with a 1962 Life magazine photograph showing seven white Mississippi lawmen admiring a billy club as they prepare for James Meredith's attempt to integrate the University of Mississippi. The author tracks down these six sheriffs and one deputy sheriff to examine how racial intolerance shaped their lives. Hendrickson then turns his attention to their descendants. He follows a grandson who dropped out of high school and married multiple times as he battles the racist legacy he sometimes embraces. He profiles a son who became sheriff in the same town his father once patrolled. Another grandson works as a border patrol agent along the Mexican frontier, carrying forward the law enforcement tradition and the beliefs of his predecessors. Through these family portraits, Hendrickson reveals how prejudice passes from one generation to the next, sometimes transformed and sometimes unchanged. The book traces the continuing impact of that 1962 moment on the children and grandchildren of the men in the photograph.
Genres: history, 20th-century, african-american, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century, social-justice, american-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-drama, generational-trauma, social-commentary
Setting: Mississippi, University of Mississippi
Period: 1962
368 pages · Hardcover · Knopf
Content warnings: racism