Books in the Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography series

This true story of an ex-Marine who fought crime as an undercover cop, a narcotics agent, and finally a federal prosecutor spans a decade of crime fighting and narrow escapes. Charlie Spillers dealt with a remarkable variety of career criminals, including heroin traffickers, safecrackers, burglars, auto thieves, and members of Mafia and Mexican drug smuggling operations. In this riveting tale, the author recounts fascinating experiences and the creative methods he used to succeed and survive in a difficult and sometimes extremely dangerous underworld life.As a young officer with the Baton Rouge Police Department, ex-Marine Charlie Spillers first went undercover to infiltrate criminal groups to gather intelligence. Working alone and often unarmed, he constantly attempted to walk the thin line between triumph and disaster. When on the hunt, his closest associates were safecrackers, prostitutes, and burglars. His abilities propelled him into years of undercover work inside drug trafficking rings. But the longer he worked, the greater the risks. His final and perhaps most significant action in Baton Rouge was leading a battle against corruption in the police department itself.After Baton Rouge, he joined the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics and for the next five years continued working undercover, from the Gulf Coast to Memphis; and from New Orleans to Houston, Texas. He capped off a unique career by becoming a federal prosecutor and the justice attache for Iraq. In this book, he shares his most intriguing exploits and exciting undercover stings, putting readers in the middle of the action.

This autobiography, divided into three parts, ""Choice,"" ""Courage,"" and ""Change,"" covers Mildred Pitts Walter's life, beginning with her childhood in the 1920s and moving to the present day. Something Inside So Strong is one woman's journey to self-discovery.

Former New York Times correspondent John N. Herbers (1923-2017), who covered the civil rights movement for more than a decade, has produced Deep South Dispatch: Memoir of a Civil Rights Journalist, a compelling story of national and historical significance. His story provides a complex understanding of how the southern status quo was transformed.

While undergoing routine surgery to remove a benign tumour, Ruby Elzy died. She was only thirty-five. Had she lived, she would have been one of the first black artists to appear in grand opera. During her brief career, Ruby Elzy was in the top tier of American sopranos. This biography recognizes her contribution to American music, and tells her tragic yet inspiring story.

Arrested as a Freedom Rider in June of 1961, Carol Ruth Silver, a twenty-two-year-old recent college graduate originally from Massachusetts, spent the next forty days in Mississippi jail cells, including the Maximum Security Unit at the infamous Parchman Prison Farm. She chronicled the events and her experiences on hidden scraps of paper which amazingly she was able to smuggle out. These raw written scraps she fashioned into a manuscript, which has waited, unread for more than fifty years. Freedom Rider Diary is that account.Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 to test the US Supreme Court rulings outlawing segregation in interstate bus and terminal facilities. Brutality and arrests inflicted on the Riders called national attention to the disregard for federal law and the local violence used to enforce segregation. Police arrested Riders for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses, but they often allowed white mobs to attack the Riders without arrest or intervention.This book offers a heretofore unavailable detailed diary from a woman Freedom Rider along with an introduction by historian Raymond Arsenault, author of the definitive history of the Freedom Rides. In a personal essay detailing her life before and after the Freedom Rides, Silver explores what led her to join the movement and explains how, galvanized by her actions and those of her compatriots in 1961, she spent her life and career fighting for civil rights. Framing essays and personal and historical photographs make the diary an ideal book for the general public, scholars, and students of the movement that changed America.

For thirty-four years Sister Anne Brooks, a Catholic nun, served one of the America's most impoverished towns and regions, Tutwiler, in the Mississippi Delta. Sally Palmer Thomason tells her powerful story, beginning with her tumultuous childhood, the overcoming of crippling arthritis, and her decision to attend medical school.

Tells the story of a gay preteen, his seven siblings, their violent father, overwhelmed mother, unstoppable grandmother, and the sordid array of customers they encounter at their family's roadside motel, situated in the hot, prairie town of Eunice, Louisiana.