Download or read book Fleeing Mississippi written by Ricky Douglas and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is 1949. Harry “the Hammer” Higgins’s first mistake was winning a fight he’d been paid to lose. His second mistake was that the man he’d beaten was the reigning heavyweight champion of the world. Framed for the champ’s death, he is forced out of boxing. Now he earns his living fighting in barns and alleys of small backwater towns. Although the standard pay was about fifty dollars, the biggest share of his profits came from the side bets common at such events. Whether he was supposed to win or lose made no difference to Higgins. He wagered accordingly. After accepting money to throw such a match, he was forced to change the outcome when winning turned out not to be enough for his opponent. The man accepted a baseball bat from someone in the crowd with the intention of using it on Higgins as he lay prone on the mat, pretending to be too whipped to continue. As before, winning a fight he’d agreed to lose infuriated those in the know who’d wagered heavily against him. And like before, these men wanted revenge for their losses. For Harry, it was time to get out of Mississippi. While traveling by freight train back to his home and family in Saint Louis, he encounters a kid nearly as desperate to get out of Mississippi as he was. Despite the fact that a black man traveling with a white kid could get him hanged, the two become travel mates. The journey soon proves to be more adventurous than either traveler is prepared for. And soon, each finds they are dependent on the other for their very survival.
Download or read book Leaving Mississippi written by Betty R. Dickson and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2020-11-18 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One month shy of her 13th birthday in 1952, the author watched as a portable electric chair was off-loaded from a huge flatbed truck and into the Simpson County courthouse. A Negro man who had killed a constable in 1951 was to be electrocuted that night. His wife, Martha Lee Durr, eight-months pregnant, was arrested, charged with accessory to murder. She lost the baby. She spent six months in the Simpson County jail before several Negro farmers posted bail for her to be released and reunited with her three children. Martha Lee was never tried in court. Upon release, she focused on getting herself and her children away from Mississippi. Martha Lee Hall, age 93, today lives in Grand Rapids, MI. This is her story of survival and forgiveness.
Download or read book Escape From Mississippi written by Lee Wells and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2007-12-03 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I wrote this book called “Escape from Mississippi”: The Diary of a Boy Growing up in the South in the 40s and 50s.’I’m going to take you to place’s tell you about people, that’s unique to me. . I will start in Columbus; go to Papa’s house and beyond. Everybody shopped in Columbus the biggest little town that was the closest to most of the country people. The hitch lot’s, where everybody parked their horses, Mules and wagons, for a fee. The proprietors in the little town of Columbus Jews owed. Most of it . There were a couple of black owed store’s. I will tell about the all White girls collage. Tell you about the County Fair. I will take you from up town through Seventh Avenue. The most popular street the most popular places. I will tell you about the schools in Columbus. Talk about the night life. The back door users, making love, through the floor. We’ll go to Steen’s, a little cross Road Town this was my Town. I’ll tell you about the Sand Road a hood within itself. A juke joint, people came from all over to hang out all night. Tell you about the churches the schools. Next to papas, two hundred and eighty five, acres of land. I’ll tell you about my best friend I grew up with. Tell you of the coal tin top house I was born in, only kerosene lamps, one working fireplace, to keep fourteen of us warm in winter. Tell you all about my sisters and brothers, about the hard work, Papa’s womanizing words papa and mama said when they were mad, slang words we used for a laugh. Tell you of the Uncles and Aunt’s Cousins. Tell you about friends of the family, people that worked for papa. Tell about papa’s saw mill. Tell you of Cattle and cops we raised. Tell you about the con men, the con preachers, the fireside ghost stories, the insane people stories. The baby with the man’s head, the poor, uneducated happy people, the biggest party in the country, the good year’s bad years… the crawling deadly creatures, the packs of wild dogs that roomed around in the fall… Moonshine makers, Moonshine runners.. I’ll take you to town Caledonia. I’ll tell you about the people the Schools Ball game’s Bar-b-q.
Download or read book Fleeing Mississippi written by Ricky D. Douglas and published by Page Publishing, Incorporated. This book was released on 2018-07-12 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is 1949. Harry "the Hammer" Higgins's first mistake was winning a fight he'd been paid to lose. His second mistake was that the man he'd beaten was the reigning heavyweight champion of the world. Framed for the champ's death, he is forced out of boxing. Now he earns his living fighting in barns and alleys of small backwater towns. Although the standard pay was about fifty dollars, the biggest share of his profits came from the side bets common at such events. Whether he was supposed to win or lose made no difference to Higgins. He wagered accordingly. After accepting money to throw such a match, he was forced to change the outcome when winning turned out not to be enough for his opponent. The man accepted a baseball bat from someone in the crowd with the intention of using it on Higgins as he lay prone on the mat, pretending to be too whipped to continue. As before, winning a fight he'd agreed to lose infuriated those in the know who'd wagered heavily against him. And like before, these men wanted revenge for their losses. For Harry, it was time to get out of Mississippi. While traveling by freight train back to his home and family in Saint Louis, he encounters a kid nearly as desperate to get out of Mississippi as he was. Despite the fact that a black man traveling with a white kid could get him hanged, the two become travel mates. The journey soon proves to be more adventurous than either traveler is prepared for. And soon, each finds they are dependent on the other for their very survival.
Download or read book Mississippi a Documentary History written by Bradley G. Bond and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Black Life on the Mississippi written by Thomas C. Buchanan and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this exploration of the complex relationship between slavery and freedom, the author documents the variety of experiences among slaves and free blacks who lived and worked along the Mississippi River in the nineteenth century.
Download or read book The Mississippi Encyclopedia written by Ted Ownby and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 2548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recipient of the 2018 Special Achievement Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters and Recipient of a 2018 Heritage Award for Education from the Mississippi Heritage Trust The perfect book for every Mississippian who cares about the state, this is a mammoth collaboration in which thirty subject editors suggested topics, over seven hundred scholars wrote entries, and countless individuals made suggestions. The volume will appeal to anyone who wants to know more about Mississippi and the people who call it home. The book will be especially helpful to students, teachers, and scholars researching, writing about, or otherwise discovering the state, past and present. The volume contains entries on every county, every governor, and numerous musicians, writers, artists, and activists. Each entry provides an authoritative but accessible introduction to the topic discussed. The Mississippi Encyclopedia also features long essays on agriculture, archaeology, the civil rights movement, the Civil War, drama, education, the environment, ethnicity, fiction, folklife, foodways, geography, industry and industrial workers, law, medicine, music, myths and representations, Native Americans, nonfiction, poetry, politics and government, the press, religion, social and economic history, sports, and visual art. It includes solid, clear information in a single volume, offering with clarity and scholarship a breadth of topics unavailable anywhere else. This book also includes many surprises readers can only find by browsing.
Download or read book A New History of Mississippi written by Dennis J. Mitchell and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Creating the first comprehensive narrative of Mississippi since the bicentennial history was published in 1976, Dennis J. Mitchell recounts the vibrant and turbulent history of a Deep South state. The author has condensed the massive scholarship produced since that time into an appealing narrative, which incorporates people missing from many previous histories including American Indians, women, African Americans, and a diversity of other minority groups. This is the story of a place and its people, history makers and ordinary citizens alike. Mississippi's rich flora and fauna are also central to the story, which follows both natural and man-made destruction and the major efforts to restore and defend rare untouched areas. Hernando De Soto, Sieur d’Iberville, Ferdinand Claiborne, Thomas Hinds, Aaron Burr, Greenwood LeFlore, Joseph Davis, Nathan Bedford Forrest, James D. Lynch, James K. Vardaman, Mary Grace Quackenbos, Ida B. Wells, William Alexander Percy, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Elvis Presley, John Grisham, Jack Reed, William F. Winter, Jim Barksdale, Richard Howorth, Christopher Epps, and too many more to list—this book covers a vast and rich legacy. From the rise and fall of American Indian culture to the advent of Mississippi’s world-renowned literary, artistic, and scientific contributions, Mitchell vividly brings to life the individuals and institutions that have created a fascinating and diverse state.
Download or read book Mississippi Escape written by Malcolm Balfour and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-10-04 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Midnight, March 12, 1963. Mississippi State's president crouched low in the passenger seat, heading for the Alabama state line to escape from an injunction to keep the team home. In a second car, the athletic director and the basketball coach were fleeing for Tennessee. A team of decoys was heading to the airport the next morning. All this for a little ol' ballgame? There are those who call this "little ol' ballgame" the greatest victory for equality since Jackie Robinson joined the major leagues. Mississippi State's dramatic escape marked the end of the "Unwritten Law" and a profound change in what segregationists called "the Southern way of life." Right away, all major Southern universities began to actively recruit black athletes. This book is an eyewitness account of how a quiet-spoken university president defied the nation's most racist governor by engineering his team's escape from Mississippi to play in an integrated NCAA tournament, a move that would shatter segregation forever.
Download or read book My First White Friend written by Patricia Raybon and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1997-06-01 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In mid-life Afro-American journalist Raybon made a conscious decision to stop hating white people. Her journal/analysis provides discourse on hatred and forgiveness, the rise of her hatred, and her efforts to conquer her fears and forgive the past. An unusual account of conscious change."—Kirkus Reviews.
Download or read book Voices from the Mississippi Hill Country written by Roy DeBerry and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2020-07-23 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Voices from the Mississippi Hill Country is a collection of interviews with residents of Benton County, Mississippi—an area with a long and fascinating civil rights history. The product of more than twenty-five years of work by the Hill Country Project, this volume examines a revolutionary period in American history through the voices of farmers, teachers, sharecroppers, and students. No other rural farming county in the American South has yet been afforded such a deep dive into its civil rights experiences and their legacies. These accumulated stories truly capture life before, during, and after the movement. The authors’ approach places the region’s history in context and reveals everyday struggles. African American residents of Benton County had been organizing since the 1930s. Citizens formed a local chapter of the NAACP in the 1940s and ’50s. One of the first Mississippi counties to get a federal registrar under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Benton achieved the highest per capita total of African American registered voters in Mississippi. Locals produced a regular, clandestinely distributed newsletter, the Benton County Freedom Train. In addition to documenting this previously unrecorded history, personal narratives capture pivotal moments of individual lives and lend insight into the human cost and the long-term effects of social movements. Benton County residents explain the events that shaped their lives and ultimately, in their own humble way, helped shape the trajectory of America. Through these first-person stories and with dozens of captivating photos covering more than a century’s worth of history, the volume presents a vivid picture of a people and a region still striving for the prize of equality and justice.
Download or read book IT HAPPENED IN MISSISSIPPI written by Marlo Carter Kirkpatrick and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It Happened in Mississippi takes readers on a rollicking, behind-the-scenes look at some of the characters and episodes from the Magnolia State's storied past. Including both famous tales, and famous names--and little-known heroes, heroines, and happenings.
Download or read book Fugitivism written by S. Charles Bolton and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2019-08-22 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2020 Booker Worthen Literary Prize During the antebellum years, over 750,000 enslaved people were taken to the Lower Mississippi Valley, where two-thirds of them were sold in the slave markets of New Orleans, Natchez, and Memphis. Those who ended up in Louisiana found themselves in an environment of swamplands, sugar plantations, French-speaking creoles, and the exotic metropolis of New Orleans. Those sold to planters in the newly-opened Mississippi Delta cleared land and cultivated cotton for owners who had moved west to get rich as quickly as possible, driving this labor force to harsh extremes. Like enslaved people all over the South, those in the Lower Mississippi Valley left home at night for clandestine parties or religious meetings, sometimes “laying out” nearby for a few days or weeks. Some of them fled to New Orleans and other southern cities where they could find refuge in the subculture of slaves and free blacks living there, and a few attempted to live permanently free in the swamps and forests of the surrounding area. Fugitives also tried to returnto eastern slave states to rejoin families from whom they had been separated. Some sought freedom on the northern side of the Ohio River; othersfled to Mexico for the same purpose. Fugitivism provides a wealth of new information taken from advertisements, newspaper accounts, and court records. It explains how escapees made use of steamboat transportation, how urban runaways differed from their rural counterparts, how enslaved people were victimized by slave stealers, how conflicts between black fugitives and the white people who tried to capture them encouraged a culture of violence in the South, and how runaway slaves from the Lower Mississippi Valley influenced the abolitionist movement in the North. Readers will discover that along with an end to oppression, freedom-seeking slaves wanted the same opportunities afforded to most Americans.
Download or read book Flee North written by Scott Shane and published by Celadon Books. This book was released on 2023-09-19 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting account of the extraordinary abolitionist, liberator, and writer Thomas Smallwood, who bought his own freedom, led hundreds out of slavery, and named the underground railroad, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist, Scott Shane. Flee North tells the story for the first time of an American hero all but lost to history. Born into slavery, by the 1840s Thomas Smallwood was free, self-educated, and working as a shoemaker a short walk from the U.S. Capitol. He recruited a young white activist, Charles Torrey, and together they began to organize mass escapes from Washington, Baltimore, and surrounding counties to freedom in the north. They were racing against an implacable enemy: men like Hope Slatter, the region’s leading slave trader, part of a lucrative industry that would tear one million enslaved people from their families and sell them to the brutal cotton and sugar plantations of the deep south. Men, women, and children in imminent danger of being sold south turned to Smallwood, who risked his own freedom to battle what he called “the most inhuman system that ever blackened the pages of history.” And he documented the escapes in satirical newspaper columns, mocking the slaveholders, the slave traders and the police who worked for them. At a time when Americans are rediscovering a tragic and cruel history and struggling anew with the legacy of white supremacy, this Flee North -- the first to tell the extraordinary story of Smallwood -- offers complicated heroes, genuine villains, and a powerful narrative set in cities still plagued by shocking racial inequity today.
Download or read book Hurricane Katrina and the Forgotten Coast of Mississippi written by Susan L. Cutter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-07 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast in August 2005 with devastating consequences. Almost all analyses of the disaster have been dedicated to the way the hurricane affected New Orleans. This volume examines the impact of Katrina on southern Mississippi. While communities along Mississippi's Gulf Coast shared the impact, their socioeconomic and demographic compositions varied widely, leading to different types and rates of recovery. This volume furthers our understanding of the pace of recovery and its geographic extent, and explores the role of inequalities in the recovery process and those antecedent conditions that could give rise to a 'recovery divide'. It will be especially appealing to researchers and advanced students of natural disasters and policy makers dealing with disaster consequences and recovery.
Download or read book Barksdale s Charge written by Phillip Thomas Tucker and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2013-07-24 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the third day of Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee launched a magnificent attack. For pure pageantry it was unsurpassed, and it also marked the centerpiece of the war, both time-wise and in terms of how the conflict had turned a cornerÑfrom persistent Confederate hopes to impending Rebel despair. But PickettÕs Charge was crushed by the Union defenders that day, having never had a chance in the first place. The ConfederacyÕs real Òhigh tideÓ at Gettysburg had come the afternoon before, during the swirling conflagration when LongstreetÕs corps first entered the battle, when the Federals just barely held on. The foremost Rebel spearhead on that second day of the battle was BarksdaleÕs Mississippi brigade, which launched what one (Union) observer called the "grandest charge that was ever seen by mortal man.Ó BarksdaleÕs brigade was already renowned in the Army of Northern Virginia for its stand-alone fights at Fredericksburg. On the second day of Gettysburg it was just champing at the bit to go in. The Federal left was not as vulnerable as Lee had envisioned, but had cooperated with Rebel wishes by extending its Third Corps into a salient. HoodÕs crack division was launched first, seizing DevilÕs Den, climbing Little Round Top, and hammering in the wheatfield. Then Longstreet began to launch McLawsÕ division, and finally gave Barksdale the go-ahead. The Mississippians, with their white-haired commander on horseback at their head, utterly crushed the peach orchard salient and continued marauding up to Cemetery Ridge. Hancock, Meade, and other Union generals desperately struggled to find units to stem the Rebel tide. One of BarksdaleÕs regiments, the 21st Mississippi, veered off from the brigade in the chaos, rampaging across the field, overrunning Union battery after battery. The collapsing Federals had to gather men from four different corps to try to stem the onslaught. Barksdale himself was killed at the apex of his advance. Darkness, as well as Confederate exhaustion, finally ended the dayÕs fight as the shaken, depleted Federal units on their heights took stock. They had barely held on against the full ferocity of the Rebels, on a day that decided the fate of the nation. BarksdaleÕs Charge describes the exact moment when the Confederacy reached its zenith, and the soldiers of the Northern states just barely succeeded in retaining their perfect Union. Phillip Thomas Tucker, Ph.D. Has authored or edited over 20 books on various aspects of the American experience, especially in the fields of Civil War, Irish, African-American, Revolutionary, and Southern history. A native of St. Louis, Missouri, he has earned three degrees in American history, including a Ph.D. From St. Louis University in 1990. For over two decades, Dr. Tucker served as a military historian for the U.S. Air Force. He currently lives in the vicinity of Washington, DC.
Download or read book Birds of Mississippi written by William H. Turcotte and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 1999 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book on the diversity, distribution, conservation, and history of birds in the Magnolia State
