Civil
Rights ChildhoodFrom The
Publisher
"Two voices blend in this memoir from the Civil Rights era in Mississippi - a
father's and a daughter's."--BOOK JACKET. "The child states that her father
rejected the ugly Jim Crow tradition and aimed at achieving an improbable dream for a
black man in late 1950s Mississippi - to become a schoolteacher. First, he served as a
"colored soldier" in the armed forces. Then he returned home to marry in 1955,
an especially ominous time in the annals of black southerners. The heinous murder of the
black northern teenager Emmitt Till occurred then."--BOOK JACKET. "Jordan got
his education with aid from the GI Bill and realized his dream of teaching. But it wasn't
enough. Beginning to live according to his conscience, he joined his life to the Civil
Rights Movement."--BOOK JACKET. "The voices in this book tell a story whose
theme is familiar to legions of African Americans. Yet its particular voices, until now,
have gone unheard. Though this is told by a child born in the segregated South, it is also
the story of a family's triumph over a dark heritage, a story of a childhood that casts
away a centuries-old tradition of insult and denial to embrace a heritage of freedom and
love."--BOOK JACKET.
Review
Publisher's Weekly - Publishers Weekly
This heartfelt chronicle of a black family's courageous desire to remain in Mississippi
from the 1930s to the mid-1960s despite the oppressive Jim Crow laws draws on the
reminiscences of Andrew L. Jordan, the son of sharecroppers and a former executive
director of the NAACP in Greenwood, Miss., who kept a diary that his daughter has lovingly
framed with her own insights. Tracing her father's beginnings, Shakoor accurately
describes the brutal exploitation of sharecroppers by their white overseers in the land of
King Cotton. She unsparingly depicts the harsh traditions of Jim Crow and the evil fury of
the Ku Klux Klanm as well as the strict code of legalized segregation that held black
residents captive. One surprising anecdote introduces two white men of conscience, Mr.
Jeff and Mr. Cole, who broke ranks and treated their black workers as equals. In some of
the book's most evocative entries, Jordan conveys the grievous price exacted from those
who put their lives on the line to dismantle segregation. Other standout sections deal
with the vicious lynching of Emmitt Till in nearby Money, and the fearless leadership of
Medgar Evers. Avoiding tearjerker prose, Shakoor describes the overwhelming pressures that
finally forced her battered yet proud father to leave his beloved state for the dream of a
better life in the North, though this coda lacks the power of earlier episodes. Readers
seeking a view from the ground of one of the bloodiest civil rights battlefields will find
this account by a pair of survivors engrossing and vital. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners
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