Deep South Dispatch
Memoir of a Civil Rights Journalist (Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography)
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Narrated by:
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Kirk Winkler
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By:
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John N. Herbers
About this listen
Former New York Times correspondent John N. Herbers (1923-2017), who covered the civil rights movement for more than a decade, has produced Deep South Dispatch: Memoir of a Civil Rights Journalist, a compelling story of national and historical significance.
Herbers' reporting began in 1951, when he covered the brutal execution of Willie McGee, a Black man convicted for the rape of a White housewife, and the 1955 trial for the murder of Emmett Till, a Black teenager killed for allegedly whistling at a White woman. With immediacy and firsthand detail, Herbers describes the assassination of John F. Kennedy; the death of four Black girls in the Birmingham, Alabama, church bombing; extensive travels and interviews with Martin Luther King, Jr.; Ku Klux Klan cross-burning rallies and private meetings; the Freedom Summer murders in Philadelphia, Mississippi; and marches and riots in St. Augustine, Florida, and Selma, Alabama, that led to passage of national civil rights legislation.
This account is also a personal journey as Herbers witnessed the movement with the conflicted eyes of a man dedicated to his southern heritage but who also rejected the prescribed laws and mores of a prejudiced society.
The book is published by University Press of Mississippi. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.
“A wonderful and important memoir ... groundbreaking coverage of the civil rights movement.” (Washington Times)
“John made a lasting contribution to the movement and to America.” (Congressman John Lewis)
“John Herbers has always been one of our heroes.” (Cokie Roberts, bestselling author and commentator for ABC News and NPR)
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Story
An intimate and revealing portrait of civil rights icon and longtime US congressman John Lewis, linking his life to the painful quest for justice in America from the 1950s to the present - from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of America.
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Absolutely remarkable!
- By Janie on 08-30-20
By: Jon Meacham, and others
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30 Days a Black Man
- The Forgotten Story That Exposed the Jim Crow South
- By: Bill Steigerwald, Juan Williams - foreword
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1948 most White people in the North had no idea how unjust and unequal daily life was for the 10 million African Americans living in the South. But that suddenly changed after Ray Sprigle, a famous White journalist from Pittsburgh, went undercover and lived as a Black man in the Jim Crow South. Escorted through the South's parallel Black society by John Wesley Dobbs, a historic Black civil rights pioneer from Atlanta, Sprigle met with sharecroppers, local Black leaders, and families of lynching victims.
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Review review
- By bill steigerwald on 12-13-20
By: Bill Steigerwald, and others
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Wilmington's Lie
- The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
- By: David Zucchino
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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By the 1890s, Wilmington was North Carolina’s largest city and a shining example of a mixed-race community. It was a bustling port city with a burgeoning African American middle class and a Fusionist government of Republicans and Populists that included black aldermen, police officers, and magistrates. There were successful black-owned businesses and an African American newspaper, The Record. But across the state - and the South - white supremacist Democrats were working to reverse the advances made by former slaves and their progeny.
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HOW TO GAIN AN UNDERSTANDING OF HOW RACISM HAS BEEN USED AS A TOOL BY WEALTHY
- By Linzay on 06-19-20
By: David Zucchino
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The Blood of Emmett Till
- By: Timothy B. Tyson
- Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Mississippi, 1955: 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered by a white mob after making flirtatious remarks to a white woman, Carolyn Bryant. Till's attackers were never convicted, but his lynching became one of the most notorious hate crimes in American history. It launched protests across the country, helped the NAACP gain thousands of members, and inspired famous activists like Rosa Parks to stand up and fight for equal rights for the first time.
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Tough read. Rest in Peace Emmit. We are so sorry!
- By Melanie B on 09-16-18
By: Timothy B. Tyson
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Red Summer
- The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America
- By: Cameron McWhirter
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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After World War I, black Americans fervently hoped for a new epoch of peace, prosperity, and equality. Black soldiers believed their participation in the fight to make the world safe for democracy finally earned them rights they had been promised since the close of the Civil War. Instead, an unprecedented wave of anti-black riots and lynchings swept the country. From April to November of 1919, the racial unrest rolled across the South into the North and the Midwest, even to the nation's capital. Red Summer is the first narrative history about this epic encounter.
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Better Understand 2019 by Looking Closely at 1919
- By JAS on 03-27-19
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The Race Beat
- The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation
- By: Gene Roberts, Hank Klibanoff
- Narrated by: Richard Allen
- Length: 21 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on private correspondence, notes from secret meetings, unpublished articles, and interviews, veteran journalists Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff go behind the headlines and datelines to show how a dedicated cadre of newsmen - first black reporters, then liberal Southern editors, then reporters and photographers from the national press and the broadcast media - revealed to a nation its most shameful shortcomings and propelled its citizens to act.
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A fascinating inside look at history
- By Ron on 09-22-09
By: Gene Roberts, and others
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At the Dark End of the Street
- Black Women, Rape, and Resistance - A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power
- By: Danielle L. McGuire
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In this groundbreaking and important book, Danielle McGuire writes about the rape in 1944 of a 24-year-old mother and sharecropper, Recy Taylor, who strolled toward home after an evening of singing and praying at the Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Alabama. Seven white men, armed with knives and shotguns, ordered the young woman into their green Chevrolet, raped her, and left her for dead. The president of the local NAACP branch office sent his best investigator and organizer to Abbeville. Her name was Rosa Parks.
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Difficult topic, trigger warnings apply
- By Adam Shields on 08-03-22
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The Defender
- How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America; from the Age of the Pullman Porters to the Age of Obama
- By: Ethan Michaeli
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 22 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Giving voice to the voiceless, the Chicago Defender condemned Jim Crow, catalyzed the Great Migration, and focused the electoral power of black America. Robert S. Abbott founded the Defender in 1905, smuggled hundreds of thousands of copies into the most isolated communities in the segregated South, and was dubbed a "Modern Moses", becoming one of the first black millionaires in the process.
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There's an unexpected genius here
- By Porter on 01-19-19
By: Ethan Michaeli
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The Ground Breaking
- An American City and Its Search for Justice
- By: Scott Ellsworth
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the course of less than 24 hours in the spring of 1921, Tulsa’s infamous “Black Wall Street” was wiped off the map - and erased from the history books. Official records were disappeared, researchers were threatened, and the worst single incident of racial violence in American history was kept hidden for more than 50 years. But there were some secrets that would not die. A riveting and essential new book, The Ground Breaking not only tells the long-suppressed story of the notorious Tulsa race massacre.
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Excellent book on the Tulsa Massacre
- By vivabooks on 08-15-21
By: Scott Ellsworth
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Furious Hours
- Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
- By: Casey Cep
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted—thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the reverend. Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South.
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Great book, needs a Southern narrator
- By Joseph Wu on 06-06-19
By: Casey Cep
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Conviction
- The Murder Trial That Powered Thurgood Marshall's Fight for Civil Rights
- By: Denver Nicks, John Nicks
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 6 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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On New Year's Eve, 1939, a horrific triple murder occurred in rural Oklahoma. Within a matter of days, investigators identified several suspects: convicts who had been at a craps game with one of the victims the night before. Also at the craps game was a young black farmer named W. D. Lyons. Political pressure mounted to find a villain. The governor's representative settled on Lyons, who was arrested, tortured into signing a confession, and tried for the murder. The NAACP's new Legal Defense and Education Fund sent its young chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall, to take part in the trial.
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What a piece of history 💕
- By Private on 01-12-21
By: Denver Nicks, and others
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Righteous Troublemakers
- Untold Stories of the Social Justice Movement in America
- By: Al Sharpton
- Narrated by: Al Sharpton
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Righteous Troublemakers shines a light on everyday people called to do extraordinary things—like Pauli Murray, whose early work inspired Thurgood Marshall, Claudette Colvin, who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus months before Rosa Parks did the same, and Gwen Carr, whose private pain in losing her son Eric Garner stoked her public activism against police brutality. Sharpton also gives his personal take on more widely known individuals, revealing overlooked details, historical connections, and a perspective informed by years of working in the social justice movement.
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Thank God for this book knowledge is power
- By JOAN REID on 02-23-22
By: Al Sharpton