FURTHER READING
Below are some books and materials that will be helpful if you wish to extend your knowledge of the subjects that Mississippi Reckoning addresses: the civil rights movement, racism and white supremacy, the death penalty and the criminal justice system. Of course, this is not a comprehensive listing.
If you enjoyed reading Mississippi Reckoning and feel it was a valuable or informative experience, I would love to hear from you. You can write to me at mitchell@mississippi-reckoning.com. I would also appreciate it if you would share your response to the book by taking the time to post a short review on Amazon or elsewhere. If you wish to do so, this link will take you to the Amazon review page. Thank you.
If you enjoyed reading Mississippi Reckoning and feel it was a valuable or informative experience, I would love to hear from you. You can write to me at mitchell@mississippi-reckoning.com. I would also appreciate it if you would share your response to the book by taking the time to post a short review on Amazon or elsewhere. If you wish to do so, this link will take you to the Amazon review page. Thank you.
African American History and
the Struggle for Equal Justice
Overview
Henry Louis Gates, Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History 1513 – 2008 (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2011).
This big, large-format book, with hundreds of photos and other illustrations, provides a broad, sweeping collection of short pieces on African American history and experience from the arrival of black people in the Americas through President Obama. Very readable.
This big, large-format book, with hundreds of photos and other illustrations, provides a broad, sweeping collection of short pieces on African American history and experience from the arrival of black people in the Americas through President Obama. Very readable.
Video and Photography
Eyes on the Prize.
A 14-part television series about the civil rights movement that aired on PBS. Exciting and engaging. More about the series, which is widely available in libraries and for purchase here: www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/eyesontheprize/
A 14-part television series about the civil rights movement that aired on PBS. Exciting and engaging. More about the series, which is widely available in libraries and for purchase here: www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/eyesontheprize/
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Powerful Days: Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, New York, 1991). Moore’s epic photos of the civil rights struggle. Danny Lyon, Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1992). From the first SNCC staff photographer, photos and recollections of a grass-roots movement. |
Matt Herron, Mississippi Eyes. The story and photography of the Southern Documentary Project (Talking Fingers Publications, San Rafael, 2014). From a SNCC activist and director of the Southern Documentary Project, Herron’s photography focused on the struggle on the individual level and on local people (as opposed to big leaders who sometimes came and went). Photos and true tales.
Books
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John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, March (Book One), March (Book Two), March (Book Three) (Top Shelf Productions, 2013, 2015, 2016). In graphic novel form, the MARCH memoir series tells the story of civil rights icon and later Congressman John Lewis, and the nonviolent struggle for equal rights as he experienced it. |
Taylor Branch, The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement (Simon & Shuster, New York, 2013). Pulitzer Prize winner Taylor Branch has written a definitive trilogy on America’s civil rights years, and I recommend the three books highly – they do not read like history, but often like the screen play of a powerful drama. But if that’s more than you want, The King Years is a 200 page version.
Taylor Branch, America in the King Years
Parting the Waters (Simon & Shuster, New York, 1988)
Pillar of Fire (Simon & Shuster, New York, 1998)
At Canaan’s Edge (Simon & Shuster, New York, 2007)
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963).
Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (1964).
If you haven’t yet actually read King’s writings, start here! These very short books make compelling reading.
Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Harvard University Press, 1995).
Howard Zinn, SNCC, The New Abolitionists (Beacon Press, Boston, 1964).
Diane McWhorter, Carry Me Home (Simon & Shuster, New York, 2001). A gripping, almost cinematic account of the civil rights battle of Birmingham.
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns, The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (Random House, New York, 2010).
On the Criminal Justice System
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In Mississippi Reckoning, I chose to tell the story of a man who was not wrongfully convicted of murder, and to explain how he came to be the kind of person who could commit a terrible crime. But the defects in our criminal justice system, and the justice-thwarting technicalities and traps for the unwary encountered by the novel’s protagonist, are all too real, and they do hinder recourse for innocent people swept up by the system.
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The Death Penalty
Executing the innocent:
Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld, Jim Dwyer, Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution, and Other Dispatches From the Wrongly Convicted (Double Day, New York, 2000).
Information on the death penalty: The website of the organization Death Penalty Focus contains information on our system of capital punishment, its biases, arbitrariness, ineffectiveness and cost. deathpenalty.org/
See also the websites of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty www.ncadp.org/
and the Death Penalty Information Center www.ncadp.org/ https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/ .
- www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/15/carlos-texas-innocent-man-death
- stories.avvo.com/crime/murder/8-people-who-were-executed-and-later-found-innocent.html
Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld, Jim Dwyer, Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution, and Other Dispatches From the Wrongly Convicted (Double Day, New York, 2000).
Information on the death penalty: The website of the organization Death Penalty Focus contains information on our system of capital punishment, its biases, arbitrariness, ineffectiveness and cost. deathpenalty.org/
See also the websites of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty www.ncadp.org/
and the Death Penalty Information Center www.ncadp.org/ https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/ .
Mass Incarceration
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Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, New York, 2010). More than any other single work, responsible for the rising awareness of America’s epidemic of imprisonment and the racial nature of mass incarceration. The writing isn't hard to read. The subject is. See newjimcrow.com/study-guides for information. James Forman Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 2017). The Prison Policy Initiative is a reliable source of information and in depth studies of mass incarceration, its shape and consequences: www.prisonpolicy.org/ |
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