Customer Reviews

Three Lives for Mississippi

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was given this book to read as an assignment in my Sociology class at college. I dreaded reading the book and put the assignment off as long as I could. However,once I started reading I could not put it down. Huie does a great job, through his interviews and quest for the truth, at putting you as close to the people and events of this historical time as one possibly could. It displays the most extreme and openly admitted amount of prejudice toward the African Americans held by the citizens of the state of Mississippi during the 1960's.

What makes this book interesting is that it was written between the murders and the trial. Huie knew who the murderers were, how they did it, and never expected a guilty verdict.

The book introduces you in detail to Michael (Mickey) Schwerener and all the details leading up to his murder. This detail will help you understand exactly why and how these murders took place.

This latest edition includes updates by the author to compare his early speculation against the results of the trial.

Huie may have written part of the story, but if you're using this for research, be aware that he did selective reporting. The alarm about the missing trio was raised by Louise Hermey, a volunteer who had traveled with the group and who was at the office when the station wagon was overdue. She spent the night trying to locate them.

"Before her stint ended at the COFO office in Meridian in the summer of 1964, Hermey said she briefly spoke to one journalist, William Bradford Huie, author of the 1965 book, Three Lives for Mississippi.
'He hung around the (COFO) office,' she said. 'I caught him making long-distance calls and kicked him out of the office. As he walked away, he said, 'You'll be sorry for this. I'll write you out of history.' '
Her name never appeared in Huie's book."

I'm wary of journalists who have personal agendas, especially spiteful ones.

A more accurate account of those events can be found in "We Are Not Afraid" by Cagin and Dray.

Five stars mean "I love It." I hate to say this is a book that I love, but it is educational reading as to the mindset of individuals residing in the deep south of Mississippi during the 1960s. The domestic terrorists in this story were bent on executing Michael Schwerner, a dedicated servant involved in getting Mississippi black residents registered to vote. Of course, he was viewed as an interloper from up north sticking his nose into other people's business. Schwerner was the one marked for death, and Andrew Goodman and James Chaney happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Schwerner wanted to go into neighboring counties that were more poverty-stricken than the one he initially arrived at in Mississippi.I found it interesting how newspapers heralded the Neshoba County Fair and all the virtues of living in the area, and virtually ignored the murders that took place there one week earlier.

This is a book about how hate can inflict its poison on the psyche of an individual who believe they are doing the Christian thing in taking the life of other individuals. I find it ironic that the terrorists involved in this dastardly dark deed were interested in suppressing voting rights. That is also going on in various states today to suppress individuals, specifically minorities and the young, who would tend to vote Democratic. We haven't progressed as much as we would sometimes like to think we have. There are those who would have this country move forward and others who would love to take us backwards. It is an ongoing fight, and this book shows us where we once were. Heaven forbid we should go back to those days.

I thoroughly loved this book when I first read it in a mass market paperback edition back in 1967(?). Huie's narrative grabbed my attention from the opening pages and I literally could not put this book down. I was a high school sophomore and as I recall this was the first book purchase I ever made that was not school-related or of the class of literature called "juvenile" literature. So many other books I read during my high school years I've long since forgotten. But (like a first love) I recall so many of the details of this one: that the cover was red, and that it had a photo section inside, for instance. Reading Three Lives for Mississippi started me on a non-fiction book-reading odyssey that has not stopped. I am 58 years old.