Silver Rights: The story of the Carter family's brave decision to send their children to an all-white school and claim their civil rights [Paperback]

Constance Curry (Author), Marian Wright Edelman (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 1996

This “sure-to-be-classic account of 1960s desegregation” (Los Angeles Times) tells the inspiring story of the Carters, black Mississippi sharecroppers who sent their children to integrate an all-white school system. “Silver Rights is pure gold!” (Julian Bond). Introduction by Marian Wright Edelman.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The story of an African American family in Mississippi who were the first to desegregate an all-white school in the '60s.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Alice Walker has observed that the expression civil rights when pronounced by older black country people becomes silver rights and that she always felt that those older blacks imparted "music" to the term. This idea is the backdrop Curry uses in this study about the Carters, a Mississippi family of sharecroppers. Matthew and Mae Bertha demonstrated great courage in their involvement in the civil rights movement, most importantly by defying the odds for survival when they enrolled 7 of their 13 children in the Drew, Mississippi, school system. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 mandated that states integrate their schools. Mississippi's interpretation of that law was "freedom of choice" papers, which allowed parents to designate the schools they wanted their children to attend. The Carters' determination to ensure that their children would receive a top-notch education was the beginning of their long, hard, and initially lonely road to integrating the schools and playing an important role in the Mississippi civil rights movement. We should be grateful to and inspired by the lives of the Carter family, particularly since the civil rights agenda is increasingly under attack. Lillian Lewis --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harvest Books (October 10, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156004798
• ISBN-13: 978-0156004794
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #326,928 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Constance Curry is a writer, activist, film producer, and a fellow at the Institute for Women's Studies, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. She has a law degree from Woodrow Wilson College. Curry did graduate work in political science at Columbia University and was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Bordeaux in France. She earned her B.A. degree in History, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. She was a Fellow at the University of Virginia's Carter G. Woodson Institute, Center for Civil Rights, Charlottesville, 1990-91.

Curry is the author of several works, including her first book, "Silver Rights" (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1995; Paper--Harcourt Brace, 1996), which won the Lillian Smith Book Award for nonfiction in 1996 and was a finalist for the 1996 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. The book was named the Outstanding Book on the subject of Human Rights in North America by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights. With an introduction by Marian Wright Edelman, "Silver Rights" tells the true story of Mrs. Mae Bertha Carter and her family's struggle for education in Sunflower County, Mississippi. The Carters were Mississippi Delta sharecroppers living on a cotton plantation in the 1960's and dared to send seven of their thirteen children to desegregate an all-white school system in 1965. Curry wrote "Mississippi Harmony" with Ms. Winson Hudson, published fall 2002 by Palgrave/St. Martin's press, which tells the life story of Mrs. Hudson, a civil rights leader from Leake County, Mississippi, who also challenged segregation in the 1960s. Curry collaborated in and edited "Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement" (University of Georgia Press, 2000) and the book "Aaron Henry: the Fire Ever Burning" (University Press of Mississippi, 2000). "The Wrong side of Murder Creek," released Nov. 1, 2008, is the memoir of Bob Zellner, the first male white field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1961-67, and is co-written by Curry. They received the Lillian Smith book award for Non-fiction in September 2009.

From 1957 to 1959, she was Field Representative, Collegiate Council for United Nations. From 1960 to 1964, she was the Director of the Southern Student Human Relations Project of U. S. N. S. A., Atlanta, developing programs for black and white college students to organize. During that period, she was the first white woman on the executive committee of SNCC and was often their "designated observer" for sit-ins and other demonstrations. From 1964 to 1975, Curry was Southern Field Representative for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). From 1975 to 1990, she was appointed by the mayor to serve as director of the City of Atlanta's Bureau of Human Services Director.

Curry is the producer of the award winning film "The Intolerable Burden," based on "Silver Rights," but showing today's resegregation in public schools and the fast track to prison for youth of color. In Feb., 2009, she was given the Living Legend Award by the Seventh Day Adventist church in Baltimore, the first white person to receive it. An activist/participant and a writer/intellectual holding a law degree, Connie Curry has helped illuminate the struggle for justice.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book looks into the soul of a very brave family., May 2, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Silver Rights (Hardcover)

Silver Right is a moving and telling story of my family struggle to achieve equality in America. This book does a very good job of relating the feeling, fear and turmoil that I felt during those four long years of being the only black family at an all white school in the Mississippi Delta in the sixites. Silver Rights goes beyond the actions of people during that time. It looks at the cilvil right movement on a personal level. This book will make you laugh, and it will also make your cry

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I was there, June 15, 2009

By 

just the facts - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silver Rights: The story of the Carter family's brave decision to send their children to an all-white school and claim their civil rights (Paperback)

In the 1965-66 school year I was in Mrs. Harpole's second grade class at AW James Elementary School in Drew, Mississippi. That year two little black girls, Beverly and Deborah Carter, enrolled at the same school. Beverly was a third grader, Deborah was in the first grade. Their sister Pearl was there as well. She seemed much older and was in the fifth or sixth grade.

That was the beginning of a series of changes in the Drew Public Schools. In 1964 the graduating class of Drew High School was all white. Across Highway 49, the Class of 64 of Hunter High School was all black. In 1971 the first "desegregated" class graduated from Drew High. In the in five years in between most of the white children left the public schools. By 1976 the graduating class picture was evenly split between black and white faces.

Many years later I read "Silver Rights" in a motel room in Greenville, Mississippi. I read it cover to cover in one sitting. I didn't sleep much that night. Instead, I thought about all the things I had read, and all the things that were done by the people I knew. I knew Mae Bertha and Matthew Carter and I knew them to be good people. I didn't know how hard they had worked or how much they suffered so their children could receive the same education as any other Mississippi child. I had no idea of the resistance they faced every step of the way.

I won't discuss the rightness or wrongness or deeper meanings of this book. I'm not about to get into the concepts of social justice and civil rights. I do know these things, though.

Matthew and Mae Bertha Carter did what was right for their children. That is the highest calling any parent could have. To the best of my knowledge, the story in this book is true in every point. The people involved were my Little League coaches, Sunday School teachers, and the parents of my friends.

This is a very good book that tells a great story of how two people did the right thing for their children and in the process did the right thing for thousands of other children.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Silver Rights in the Mississippi Delta, September 1, 2004

By 

Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Silver Rights: The story of the Carter family's brave decision to send their children to an all-white school and claim their civil rights (Paperback)

In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress mandated the desegregation of all public schools receiving Federal aid. Mississippi tried to "comply" with the law by a "Freedom of Choice" program which allowed students over a certain age and parents to designate the schools they wished to attend. While, perhaps, facially appealing, the "Freedom of Choice" program served as a means to intimidate blacks from attempting to register in what were at the time all-white schools. Those with the courage to do so faced danger to their livelihood, property, and persons. The "Freedom of Choice" program ultimately was invalidated through litigation.

Constance Curry's inspiring book "Silver Rights" (1995) tells the story of a family of black sharecroppers in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, Mae Bertha and Matthew Carter and seven of their thirteen children (all their children then of school age). The Carter's took the "Freedom of Choice" program at its word. In 1965, the seven children enrolled in the primary and secondary schools of Drew, Mississippi, a small town with a then-deserved reputation for violence and lawlessness. Ms. Curry worked as a field representative for the American Friends Service Committee from 1965-1975. She got to know the Carter family well and was instrumental in providing the assistance necessary to get them through their difficult times.

The book includes excellent pictures of life in the Mississippi Delta, for both white and black people, in the early to mid-twentieth century. The book shows a feel for the place, for sharecropping life on the farms and for life in the dusty towns, for the blues culture of the Delta, and for its history. The book offers substantial discussion of the notorious Emmett Till case and of other lynchings and of early attempts to organize civil rights activities in the Delta. Ms. Curry eloquently evokes the spirit of the Delta at the opening of her story:

"In trying to describe the Mississippi Delta, I seem to find only superlatives -- the flattest land, the blackest dirt, the hottest summers, the nicest people, the poorest people. In defining the delta's past and even its present, I am aware of these extremes and also of its incongruities: the violence and the peacefulness, the beauty and the ugliness, the stillness and the tension. It is a place complex almost beyond comprehension." (p. xxi)

In telling her story, Ms. Curry lets her protagonists do most of the talking. The opening chapters set the stage and explain the Carter's ambitions for an education, and an end to the hardships of sharecropping, for their children. The second section of the book explores the backround of Mae Bertha Carter and her mother Luvenia's early life as the wife of a Delta sharecropper. The book discusses throughout the experiences of the Carter family as they faced violence and shootings in the early stages following their enrollment in the formerly white schools. Throughout their period in the public schools the children endured harassment, name-calling and ostracism. The Carter family was forced off the plantation and Matthew Carter lost his job. The book shows the courage and perseverance of the family and the aid offered by the AFSC and other organizations.

The book includes interviews with each of the thirteen Carter children and discussions of the family members fared after their graduation from the public schools. There are some moving scenes when Ms. Curry reestablished contact with the Carter family in 1988, thirteen years after her work with the AFSC came to an end. Mae Bertha Carter remains determined and forceful and has received honors from institutions within the State of Mississippi that would have been unthinkable in the 1960s.

This book tells an important story of the silver rights movement. It is a work of both history and memory and describes beautifully the changes wrought with time.