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The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement Hardcover – September 1, 2008
| Bob Zellner (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
| Constance Curry (Collaborator) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Even forty years after the civil rights movement, the transition from son and grandson of Klansmen to field secretary of SNCC seems quite a journey. In the early 1960s, when Bob Zellner’s professors and classmates at a small church school in Alabama thought he was crazy for even wanting to do research on civil rights, it was nothing short of remarkable. Now, in his long-awaited memoir, Zellner tells how one white Alabamian joined ranks with the black students who were sitting-in, marching, fighting, and sometimes dying to challenge the Southern “way of life” he had been raised on but rejected. Decades later, he is still protesting on behalf of social change and equal rights. Fortunately, he took the time, with co-author Constance Curry, to write down his memories and reflections. He was in all the campaigns and was close to all the major figures. He was beaten, arrested, and reviled by some but admired and revered by others. The Wrong Side of Murder Creek, winner of the 2009 Lillian Smith Book Award, is Bob Zellner’s larger-than-life story, and it was worth waiting for.
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherNewSouth Books
- Publication dateSeptember 1, 2008
- Dimensions6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-101588382222
- ISBN-13978-1588382221
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
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Review
The captivating and profound testimony of a patriot who did everything he could to help make his nation a better place, The Wrong Side of Murder Creek is highly recommended. ― Midwest Book Review
Written with Curry (Silver Rights: The Story of the Carter Family's Brace Decision To Send Their Children to an All-White School and Claim Their Civil Rights), this powerful portrait of a courageous man is highly recommended for all but the smallest libraries. ― Library Journal starred review
If you want a taste of what life on the front lines was like in the Southern civil rights movement, you have to read this book. ― Jo Freeman, Senior Women Web
The journey white Southerners travel in this riveting memoir, from virulent racism to acceptance of blacks’ civil rights, is as momentous as any in American history. ― Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Atlanta-based Constance Curry is a civil rights veteran and has written several books and produced a documentary film.
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Product details
- Publisher : NewSouth Books; 1st edition (September 1, 2008)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1588382222
- ISBN-13 : 978-1588382221
- Item Weight : 1.4 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #828,156 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,556 in Social Activist Biographies
- #11,666 in United States Biographies
- #17,942 in U.S. State & Local History
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors

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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If you're very interested in the organizing done for the Civil Rights Movement, I would read this and I've Got the Light to Freedom by Charles Payne.
Americans could vote. It was dangerous work and Zellner tells a compelling, nitty gritty description of what it was like. I recommend this book to any student of social change and social justice.


![Wrong Side of Murder Creek (08) by Zellner, Bob [Hardcover (2008)]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/21TKv+u-izL._AC_UL160_SR160,160_.jpg)

