Mississippi Harmony: Memoirs of a Freedom Fighter [Paperback]

Winson Hudson (Author), Constance Curry (Author), Derrick Bell (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 2004

In 1963, Winson Hudson finally registered to vote in Leake County, Mississippi, when she interpreted part of the state constitution by saying, “It meant what it said and it said what it meant.” Her first attempt had been in 1937. A lifelong native of the rural, all-black community of Harmony, Winson has lived through some of the most racially oppressive periods in her state’s history--and has devoted her life to combatting discrimination. With her sister Dovie, Winson filed the first lawsuit to desegregate the public schools in a rural county. Helping to establish the county NAACP chapter in 1961, Winson served as its president for 38 years. Her work has included voting rights, school desegregation, health care, government loans, telephone service, good roads, housing, and childcare--issues that were intertwined with the black freedom struggle. Winson’s narrative, presented in her own words with historical background from noted author and activist Constance Curry, is both triumphant and tragic, inspiring and disturbing. It illustrates the virtually untold story of the role that African American women played in the civil rights movement at the local level in black communities throughout the South.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Hudson is a relatively unknown activist from the relatively unfamiliar Leake County, MS, whose small acts of bravery made a big difference. Readers who didn't catch her profile in Brian Lanker's I Dream a World will be pleased with this chronicle of her struggles to register to vote, desegregate the public schools, and bring racial equality to her rural town.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"The combination of historical analysis from Curry and the modest but proud voice of Hudson should attract many readers...."--P. Harvey, Choice
"The lives of the Hudson sisters...are testaments to the unsung women of the civil rights movement..."--Newark Star-Ledger
"This history cannot be told too often. Too few young people know the price paid..."--Los Angeles Times
"Winson and Dovie Hudson, fearless sisters, were finally able to register to vote in 1962, inspiring other blacks in violence-prone Leake County, Mississippi, as well as those of us giving support from the outside."--Vernon Jordan, Former Director, The Voter Education Project of the Southern Regional Council
"How is the tender, unshakeable love that we have for our people kept alive in us? Through the music, yes, and even more profoundly, I believe, through the stories. Stories of real heroic lives lived full tilt into the face of some of the worst times human beings have ever known. Lives like those of Winson Hudson and her equally indomitable sister, Dovie. This precious book reveals some of who we mean when we so proudly and so humbly say 'we.'"--Alice Walker
"Winson Hudson and her sister Dovie were two of the most extraordinary behind-the-scenes women leaders in the civil rights movement. By telling Mrs. Hudson's remarkable story in her own words, Winson Hudson and Connie Curry have preserved an invaluable piece of American and Southern history. I hope a new generation will read this book and be inspired by Winson Hudson's untiring witness for social justice in Mississippi."--Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children's Defense Fund
"There is a nobility about Mrs. Hudson and her colleagues in the Harmony Community that has stayed with me in the almost forty years since I worked with them as a Justice Department lawyer and helped them in some modest measure to achieve the right to vote well before the enactment of the Voting Rights Act. It is time that these brave people who faced down the Klan and the [White] Citizen's Council received recognition and our nation's gratitude for their courage, perseverance, and dauntless spirit in the face of cruelty and oppression." --Judge Frank E. Schwelb

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (January 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403964076
• ISBN-13: 978-1403964076
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,099,316 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Is there a cause for which you would lay down your life?, June 2, 2004

By 

Alan Mills (Chicago, Illinois USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mississippi Harmony: Memoirs of a Freedom Fighter (Paperback)

With popular focus on Martin Luther King Thurgood Marshall, and the other "heroes" of the civil rights movement, we tend to ignore the fact that the success of the movement ultimately depended not on these national figures, but on thousands of individuals who decided that freedom was worth laying down their lives and the lives of their children.

Winson Hudson was one of those women. Born in 1916 in the geographic center of Mississippi, she began trying to register to vote in the 1940's, her niece was the one and only Black child who decided to "integrate" the all white school system after Brown, she founded the County chapter of the NAACP, she housed two civil rights workers during Freedom Summer (1964), her uncle was lynched, her sister's house was bombed (several times), and her life was at risk virtually daily for over 20 years.

This remarkable book gives a quick summary (the book is less than 150 pages) of these struggles, and provides a window into the heart of Ms. Hudson (and by analogy the thousands of others like her) which gave her the courage and commitment to stand up to oppression and injustice.

The book closes with Ms. Hudson's question, and challenge: where will young people today find this courage and dedication? Reading about the day to day decisions Ms. Hudson made leads one to examine one's own life. Is there any cause for which you would be willing to risk being beaten and your house bombed; would you send your 1st grader into the face of a howling mob to prove a principle? Most would say no. We need to remember that, but for some very courageous people who said yes to these questions, this country would be a much worse place.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A life well lived, February 27, 2003

By 

"titilaya" (Washington, DC (USA)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mississippi Harmony: Memoirs of a Freedom Fighter (Hardcover)

Winsom Hudson's story about her struggle for racial justice in the cradle of segregated Mississippi is inspiring and riveting. Constance Curry, the highly respected civil rights era author allows Hudson to speak in her own voice and to take center stage. With her sister Dovie as her partner in the struggle, these two African American women defied the racial rules and charted their own half century fight against the Ku Klux Klan, the voting registrar who refused to certify Hudson as literate to vote, and all other obstacles that stood in their paths. Curry edited the book in such a way that Hudson's life becomes a template for the broad scale social change in the deep South. There were countless Winsom and Dovie Hudson's who never sought nor shared the national spotlight. However, it was through women like these that the day to day, incremental change was achieved. If you want to learn more about the lonely battle for equal rights that blacks waged before the 1960's, then Mississippi Harmony is a "must read." Fearless, compassionate, funny, and unrelenting are only a few of the traits that one sees in this extraordinary woman who can teach us a lot about endurance and running the marathon to the finish.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring & fascinating view on the great American struggle, December 31, 2002

By 

Rick Dassance (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mississippi Harmony: Memoirs of a Freedom Fighter (Hardcover)

Apparently, Senator Trent Lott had never read "Mississippi Harmony," otherwise he would have known what the fuss over his "poorly chosen words" was all about. This book tells us real stories about how the segregationist policies of Strom Thurmond and Jim Crow were more than a set of annoying rules--like "Deliveries and Colored People at the Back Entrance"-that even the senator can easily disparage. The book shows us that segregation is a pernicious smog that chokes the most mundane of human efforts: feeding your family, educating your children and worshipping your God.

For the black community of Harmony, Mississippi, to simply survive these noxious injustices would be an admirable story in itself. However, two courageous residents of that community, Winson and Dovie Hudson are able to rise above and end many of the wrongs. These women are some of the unheralded heroes who literally risked lives, jobs, and homesto fight the national civil-rights effort at a local level. They are the common soldiers in a frightening war. They are survivors with an amazing story.

Though co-written by the famed civil-rights-era author, Constance Curry, "Mississippi Harmony" is told in first person as Winson Hudson talks directly to us. Reading the book was like listening to the best of storytellers.