Confederacy of Silence: A True Tale of the New Old South [Hardcover]

Richard Rubin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2, 2002

A compelling and vivid portrait of a Deep South community poised between the past and the future, this is the stunning true story of how a young New York writer plunged into a closed Mississippi society, and what happened when he came out on the other side.

Fresh out of the Ivy League, New Yorker Richard Rubin answers a help-wanted ad for a journalist and suddenly finds himself thrust into the center of Greenwood, Mississippi, an old Delta town just beginning to submit to the realities of life in modern America. To Rubin's great surprise, Greenwood embraces him as he sets out to cover its many stories; soon, to his much greater surprise, he embraces Greenwood too, adapting so well that he even becomes a fervent booster of the local high school's football team.

While covering that team, he meets Handy Campbell, its star seventeen-year-old quarterback, a poor, unknown black kid from the projects who had never played on any team before his senior year. But Handy is also the greatest natural talent anyone can recall, and by the end of the season, he has won unimaginable glory. Rubin comes to believe that their careers will somehow rise together -- the cub reporter and his prize scoop -- in Greenwood and beyond.

But Greenwood's welcoming face hides darker secrets, and ultimately Rubin must leave it in order to preserve his own sense of right and wrong. As he departs, he is at least comforted by the knowledge that Handy Campbell will also be leaving Greenwood, bound for a powerhouse college football program that regularly sends its players to the NFL.

Six years later, Rubin is back in New York when he learns that Handy Campbell is not in the NFL but in Greenwood onceagain, charged with murdering a good friend. Rubin returns south to cover the trial and trace the trail that took Handy from Mississippi State University to the Leflore County Jail -- including, he discovers, the sinister sabotaging of his erstwhile prize scoop's football career. In the process, Rubin is forced to confront his own unresolved feelings about Greenwood, as the best and worst elements of the town rise up once again, starker than ever, to do battle over one man's fate.

Rubin's narrative, populated with a gallery of unforgettable characters, leads readers through a series of fascinating stories, suspense-laced revelations, and startling plot twists. Bold and beautifully written, "Confederacy of Silence" is a rare glimpse at how differently a small town regards two outsiders in its midst, and a tale of how all three of them are changed forever by the dawning of the New Old South.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With no prospects for employment after his Ivy League graduation in 1988, Rubin, a 21-year-old Jewish New Yorker, accepted a job as a reporter in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. At the Greenwood Commonwealth Rubin covered sports and local news, wrote obituaries and features and photographed "local color." He also followed the short, happy career of Handy T. Campbell, an African-American high school quarterback from the projects and this story forms the core of the book. Rubin believed Campbell's prowess on the gridiron would parallel Rubin's own promise in the newsroom. But after a year wrestling with his conscience for not decrying abhorrent attitudes and behavior he encountered in the bigoted bigwigs of Leflore County, Rubin fled. Six years later, he returned to Greenwood to understand how the star athlete (now an Ole Miss dropout) and an accomplice could find themselves indicted for the murder of a local UPS man rumored to be bisexual. Rubin focuses the latter part of his book on the sleazy maneuverings of college recruiters and coaches, the investigation into the victim's death, and the prosecution of the trial, which provides the book's frisson. The narrative benefits from Rubin's perceptive observations, but it is his emotional investment in the story that coheres the book's two halves: a memoir of a watershed year in his life and the sordid, convoluted tale of a gross miscarriage of justice. A grittier depiction of the New Old South than Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, to which it will undoubtedly be compared, Rubin's memoir exposes the racial polarity of the Delta in clear, effective prose.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This powerful docudrama provides a searing look at a true crime story through the eyes of a naive young man on his first job as a reporter. At 21, aspiring writer Rubin, currently a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly and the New York Times Magazine, left New York for Greenwood, MS, to settle in as a sportswriter for the daily newspaper. His first assignment included coverage of local football star Handy Campbell, a poor black athlete from the housing projects who became friends with Rubin. Six years after returning to New York, Rubin found out that his friend ended up in jail for the murder of a flamboyant man from Greenwood whom Rubin also knew. Stunned by the turn of events, Rubin returned to Greenwood on a mission to follow the trail of the promising athlete from college to prison. The result is a book that goes beyond the personal to provide a portrait of a Southern community torn by racism and bigotry. Similar to John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, this well-written debut will appeal to anyone interested in the South, racism, or true-crime stories. Recommended for all public libraries and for strong sociology collections in academic libraries. Sandra Isaacson, US Environmental Protection Agency, Las Vegas
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Atria (July 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671036661
• ISBN-13: 978-0671036669
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,350,908 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Stranger Reports from a Strange Land, June 30, 2002

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R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Confederacy of Silence: A True Tale of the New Old South (Hardcover)

Richard Rubin says he grew up in Greenwood, Mississippi. It is hyperbole; he spent one good year there in 1988 and 1989, but he was a college graduate at the time. He was, as a Greenwood friend reminds him throughout _Confederacy of Silence: A True Tale of the New Old South_ (Atria Books), an "Ivy League Yankee Jew," who came in from New York and left again for New York. His growing up during that year could have consisted only of disillusion and disgust, and while those were not absent, for Greenwood and its citizens he developed a compassion, a clear understanding, and even love. The year incidentally was one of the steps that turned him into a very fine writer, as this, his first book, shows.

With the job market for a non-typist, liberal arts degree graduate nil in New York, he was looking for work, and responded to an ad seeking a sports reporter for the Greenwood paper. Throughout the book, he shows how Greenwood citizens were almost universally interested, kind, and accepting. The rare instances when he was not welcomed were generally because he was a reporter, not because of his origins. Of course he ran into racists, such as the one who refused the paper because it had too many pictures of blacks in it (although of course the word "black" was not used). Rubin formulated the plan that while in Greenwood, he would maintain a courteous and genial appearance, and keep his outrage to himself. While this is probably mere reciprocation of what the Greenwood citizens did toward him, it worked, in a way: "...while it would indeed protect my job, it would do something quite different to my conscience." Much of the delightful memoir within this book has to do with a foreigner adjusting to a strange land, and would do as a guidebook. He learns what tea, fire ants, and chewing tobacco are, and that sports means football. He was able to write about the Greenwood football team which had a glorious year, quarterbacked by a black, Handy Campbell, who, among other achievements, capped his season with a magnificent seventy yard pass against arch-rival Tupelo. Campbell had all the makings for a fine college quarterback and a career as a professional, but it did not happen. In fact, he wound up on trial for murder. When Rubin, back in New York, heard about the charges, he returned to Greenwood, six years later, to find out what had happened. He makes a good case that Campbell's college career was deliberately derailed because the universities could not at that time have accepted a black quarterback, although he does not leave out the mistakes Campbell made. The outcome of the murder trial, meticulously reported here, reinforces much of what Rubin learned in his time in Greenwood, but it is a surprising outcome nonetheless, and not to be revealed here.

Rubin's digressions on his visits to Confederate graveyards, or meeting with Jews who lived in the town, or dating southern girls, are important to relaying the atmosphere of his second home town. Though the latter part of the book is an examination of the sad case of Handy Campbell, the book overall is an affectionate portrayal of a Delta town and the friends he made there. It has a gripping story, and brilliant pictures of singular characters. Greenwood did right by this visitor, and his book repays the favor handsomely.

24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Southern Discomfort, August 2, 2002

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Sherri (Winston Salem, New Caledonia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Confederacy of Silence: A True Tale of the New Old South (Hardcover)

Having spent my formative years in Mississippi, I approached Mr. Rubin's book with some trepidation. I do love Mississippi-warts and all. I am all too familiar with books written about the South that berate the people based upon their history and the stereotypical depiction of their actions. Refreshingly, Mr. Rubin does not fall into this trap. Yes, there are sections of the book that are difficult to read due to the hateful, racist language referenced. Thankfully, Confederacy of Silence doesn't stop there. The beauty of the place and the generosity and graciousness of the people are crucial aspects of the Mississippi experience that the author astutely depicts for the reader.

I found the section of the book devoted to the writer's experience in the Delta truly fascinating. I found the second half of the book to be a genuine `page turner.' While I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, I wanted to finish it quickly to find out what happened to Handy Campbell. I did approach the ending with some hesitancy-would Campbell be found guilty even though he was innocent or was he actually guilty? I must admit that the final outcome of the trial was something I never even considered.

I highly recommend this book. As a native of Mississippi, I strongly urge those unfamiliar with the state to experience second-hand the good in the people that Mr. Rubin encounters-it is easy to see the bad. The author uses a clear voice from which the reader can draw his or her own opinion.

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Death and Disillusionment in the Deep South, August 2, 2002

By A Customer

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This review is from: Confederacy of Silence: A True Tale of the New Old South (Hardcover)

Okay, I don't live in Mississippi. But I live in Alabama, and I think that qualifies me to say that in 'Confederacy of Silence,' Richard Rubin -- who quotes someone calling him 'a Yankee Jew' as soon as the book gets going -- has drawn one of the most well-rounded and thoughtful portraits of this never-boring place we call The South. Most Northerners would come down here with their minds made up, ready to stereotype, ready to poke fun and use a whole bunch of dialect (when Rubin uses it, which isn't much, it's really effective and makes a character come to life). Not Rubin. He doesn't know what he's going to find, and while he has some preconceived ideas, he discards them along the way and shows himself doing it. He really *lives* in Mississippi--he gets into his community, he finds things he thinks are fascinating, and he shares them with all of us in a way that makes us think they're interesting too. So that's one part of the book. Another part of the book is about Handy Campbell, a high-school football star whose amazing senior season Rubin covers, and his trial for murder six or so years later. I won't give away the ending, but what makes it so compelling is not just whether Handy is guilty but how Rubin feels about Handy and how the trial affects that. I read a review somewhere that compared this to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. And it's kind of true, because Confederacy of Silence shows us an entire community and how the way various people live in the community can lead to a murder and how that affects the town. Anyone who liked 'Midnight' will like this. It's not just a memoir, it's not just reporting, it's not even just true crime. It's a really well-rounded view of a whole place, the Mississippi Delta, and its history and its culture and what they lead to. It's great reading.