Son of the Rough South: An Uncivil Memoir [Hardcover]

Karl Fleming (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2005

A remarkable and moving memoir of growing up poor in a tough place and covering the most brutal - though often inspiring - aspects of the civil rights revolution Legendary civil rights reporter Karl Fleming was born in North Carolina's flattest, bleakest tobacco landscape. Raised in a Methodist orphanage during the Great Depression, he was isolated from much of the world around him until an early newspaper job introduced him to the era's brutal racial politics and a subsequent posting as Newsweek's lead civil rights reporter took him to the South's hotspots throughout the 1960's: James Meredith's enrolment at the University of Mississippi, the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the murders of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi and more. On May 17th 1966, Fleming was beaten by black rioters on the street of Los Angeles. Newsweek covered the incident in their next issue, and here's what they wrote: "That he was beaten by Negroes in the streets of Watts was a cruel irony. Fleming had covered the landmark battles of the Negro revolt from Albany, Georgia to Oxford, Mississippi to Birmingham, Alabama, and numberless way stations whose names are now all but forgotten. No journalist was more closely tuned into the Movement; once when a Newsweek Washington correspondent asked the Justice Department to name some Dixie hot spots, the Justice man replied, "Ask Fleming. That's what we do." In Son of the Rough South, Fleming has delivered a stunning, revealing memoir of all the worlds he knew, black, white, violent and cloistered - and a deeply moving read for anyone interested in the rough South.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fleming covered the social struggles of the 1960s for Newsweek as its chief civil rights reporter. What makes this bracing memoir more than a simple morality tale about good activists versus evil traditionalists is Fleming's deep connection to Southern culture: raised in crushing poverty in smalltown North Carolina during the Depression, he was given over to a church orphanage at the tender age of eight when his mother could no longer afford to take care of him. Stumbling into journalism almost by accident, Fleming (now the L.A.-based spouse of Ann Taylor Fleming) began to see the racist culture around him in a new way, and vowed to expose the truth. Following this youthful and idealistic declaration is a harrowing and brutally honest account of Fleming's experiences on all sides of the civil rights battle: oafish, vile Klansmen as well as inspirational leaders, activists and everyday people struggling for equality are here, but more compelling are Fleming's own struggles to understand his place as a white Southerner in the midst of the chaos, fear, hatred and optimism that marked the South in the early 1960s. Eventually, the violence, both personal and political, overwhelmed Fleming, and he recounts in sobering detail his struggle to make sense of his life and his past in the years following the end of the Civil Rights movement. The territory may be familiar, but Fleming provides a complex and fresh perspective. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Fleming will forever be remembered as the Newsweek reporter who was photographed after being severely beaten in the Watts riots of 1966. In this memoir, he recounts the long road that led to his reporting on race relations and the incendiary social issues that exploded that day. He was born in 1927 in a poor, bleak North Carolina community and raised in an orphanage when his mother could no longer afford to take care of him. Fleming left college early to begin life as a reporter with a small-town newspaper, covering the police beat with a cynical police chief who mistreated blacks. It was Fleming's first hint that, having grown up in an orphanage, his sympathies were with the underdog. He went on to cover the turbulent racial changes in the South, including James Meredith's enrollment at the University of Mississippi and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Medgar Evers. In this stunning memoir, Fleming offers the perspective of a poor white boy witnessing the racial turbulence that changed the U.S. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; 1ST edition (May 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586482963
• ISBN-13: 978-1586482961
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,805,351 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting Reading, June 24, 2005

By 

C. W. Emblom "Bill Emblom" (Ishpeming, Michigan USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Son of the Rough South: An Uncivil Memoir (Hardcover)

This book is over 400 pages long and I finished it in two days. It is without a doubt one of the very best books I have read in some time. Karl Fleming describes in great, interesting detail how his mother had to give him and his sister up to live in an orphanage because she wasn't able to provide for them. His experiences during this time period are many. He tells us of the unwritten rules the boys followed, the adults (Mable "Muh" Brown, in particular) who befriended him, the bully "Fatty" Clark, who gave him such a hard time, and the church sermons he had to listen to that portrayed God in such an angry way that, as an adult, unfortunately, turned Karl Fleming against attending church. Karl was without a college education, but he educated himself with his love of reading several of the classics from American literature. Hired by newsweek as a reporter Karl Fleming brings the reader to Oxford, Mississippi, where James Meredith enrolled as the first black student. The bombing of the black church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four young girls, the death of three civil rights' workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and other unfortunate incidents in the civil rights movement of the 1960's are dealt with in vivid detail. Portraits of southern bigots such as Bull Connor, Ross Barnett, and others who resented their black citizens from having the equal rights they so richly deserved are also provided. Fleming, despite his growing up in North Carolina, sided with the underdog blacks because he, himself, had grown up in the orphanage being bullied. I feel God placed "Fatty" Clark in Karl's life as a young boy as a way of preparing him for what he would encounter in his job as an adult. I would suggest you have adequate time when you sit down to read this book because you're not going to want to put it down.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A most important book, August 1, 2005

By 

J Martin Jellinek (Memphis, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Son of the Rough South: An Uncivil Memoir (Hardcover)

My partner met Karl Flemming when Mr. Fleming visited the National Civil Rights Museum her in Memphis. We bought the book immediately, but it took a while for me to read it. I am really glad that I did though. Mr. Fleming's upbringing in the very depressed south was fascinating and opened my eyes to a life that was very foreign to me. However, the most powerful part came close to the end, and I quote from page 416: "In a fancy new Jackson mall, two young black women having lunch at Primo's Restaurant lectured me at passionate length on how nothing was better. A decade earlier they might have been beaten or killed but here they were, eating stuffed flounder surrounded by white patrons not paying any attention, with a white waitress asking, 'Can I get you ladies anything else?'"

These changes and our acceptance of the status quo make this book essential reading. We cannot forget history and its lessons, no matter how unpleasant those lessons might be. Karl Fleming gives us an inside view of a most important part of human history. Lest we forget...

Thank you, Mr. Fleming for sharing your story with us.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A poignant memoir and a riveting history of the 60's, May 31, 2005

By 

Newsreader (Oakland, Ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Son of the Rough South: An Uncivil Memoir (Hardcover)

I knew of Karl Fleming as the journalist who was there for vitually every important event of the Southern Civil Rights movement. What I hadn't known was how he got there, what made him able to see the changes sweeping throught the South and the country before most other reporters in the country. His growing up years in the white underclass might have prepared him to be as resistant to change as any good old boy. But he grew up in relative innocence, in a white Methodist orphanage, and emerged with a naive curiosity that made him a great reporter. This is a book about a life that simply could not be lived in any other era in this country.