Books in the Civil Rights in Mississippi Series series

Originally published in 1966, more than ten years after the Supreme Court ended segregation in public schools, James Meredith describes his intense struggle to attend an all-white university and break down long-held race barriers in one of the most conservative states in America.

On June 21 1964 three activists were abducted and murdered in Neshoba County near the town of Philadelphia. William Bradford Huie was sent to this seething community to cover the breaking story. This book is his documentary account written in the heat of the dangerous and dramatic moment.

In 1964, sociologist William McCord began a study of Mississippi's Freedom Summer. Published in 1965 by W.W. Norton, his book, Mississippi, is one of the first examinations of the events of 1964 by a scholar. It provides a compelling, detailed account of Mississippi people and places, including the thousands of student workers who found in the state both opportunities and challenges.

On Saturday, September 5, 1964, the family of Albert W. "e;Red"e; Heffner Jr., a successful insurance agent, left their house at 202 Shannon Drive in McComb, Mississippi, where they had lived for ten years. They never returned. In the eyes of neighbors, their unforgiveable sin was to have spoken on several occasions with civil rights workers and to have invited two into their home. Consequently, the Heffners were subjected to a campaign of harassment, ostracism, and economic retaliation shocking to a white family who believed that they were respected community members.So the Heffners Left McComb, originally published in 1965 and reprinted now for the first time, is Greenville journalist Hodding Carter's account of the events that led to the Heffners' downfall. Historian Trent Brown, a McComb native, supplies a substantial introduction evaluating the book's significance. The Heffners' story demonstrates the forces of fear, conformity, communal pressure, and threats of retaliation that silenced so many white Mississippians during the 1950s and 1960s. Carter's book provides a valuable portrait of a family who was not choosing to make a stand, but merely extending humane hospitality. Yet the Heffners were systematically punished and driven into exile for what was perceived as treason against white apartheid.