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Rating: 
Summary: A waste of my precious time
Review: I chose to read this book because I thought that Ms. Wiinstead was going to write about the slayings of the Civil Rights Workers (Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney, and Michael Henry Schwerner). She did, but a little less than 1/3 of her book was actually about their slayings and how her great uncle was involved with the slayings.I was really very disappointed. She talked mostly about her racist family that lived in the state of Mississippi and the 'N' word was used way too much. If you haven't purchased this book yet, good..if you did...oh well!!! Hint (If this book was so good, then why are so many people selling theirs?)... Thank You.
Rating:
Summary: A waste of my precious time
Review: I chose to read this book because I thought that Ms. Wiinstead was going to write about the slayings of the Civil Rights Workers (Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney, and Michael Henry Schwerner). She did, but a little less than 1/3 of her book was actually about their slayings and how her great uncle was involved with the slayings. I was really very disappointed. She talked mostly about her racist family that lived in the state of Mississippi and the 'N' word was used way too much. If you haven't purchased this book yet, good..if you did...oh well!!! Hint (If this book was so good, then why are so many people selling theirs?)... Thank You.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to put down
Review: I found Back to Mississippi a book that was hard to put down, unexpectedly so. From the beginning of the book you know that the story to be told is of the murder of three civil rights' workers and a family's denial of those murders. At the same time this is a personal story of discovery and loss that really pulls the reader in. There are three themes in this memoir: the writer's Catholic upbringing in the north, the delightful discovery of a warm and loving family in the south, and the historical record of the bitter civil rights struggle in Mississippi. As the book progresses there there is an increasing feeling of foreboding of the connection between the family stories and the brutal murders of the civil rights' workers. This foreboding, good stories, and pertinent historical detail made this book more than worth the read. Also, it left me wanting to know more about this period and the concealment of the violence perpeptrated then.
Rating:
Summary: Hard to put down
Review: I found Back to Mississippi a book that was hard to put down, unexpectedly so. From the beginning of the book you know that the story to be told is of the murder of three civil rights' workers and a family's denial of those murders. At the same time this is a personal story of discovery and loss that really pulls the reader in. There are three themes in this memoir: the writer's Catholic upbringing in the north, the delightful discovery of a warm and loving family in the south, and the historical record of the bitter civil rights struggle in Mississippi. As the book progresses there there is an increasing feeling of foreboding of the connection between the family stories and the brutal murders of the civil rights' workers. This foreboding, good stories, and pertinent historical detail made this book more than worth the read. Also, it left me wanting to know more about this period and the concealment of the violence perpeptrated then.
Rating: 
Summary: More than I expected
Review: I picked up this book to learn more about the 1960s civil rights movement and ended up with much more. Winstead's stories about her childhood and family experiences were delightful bringing to mind many long forgotten memories - her mother's housework, delicious food prepared by southern relatives, happy times with cousins, to name a few. Winstead's accountof her family's involvement in the deaths of civil rights workers is engaging and powerful.
A wonderful first effort. Buy this book!
Rating:
Summary: More than I expected
Review: Mary Winstead does a brilliant job depicting the conflicts that grow within everyones soul concerning the lives of people raised in the rural south during the turbulent civil rights movement and the fears that bind real people from remembering and living the "Golden Rule." She cleverly and beautifully lures her readers into realizing that you can take a man out of the South but, you cannot always take the South out of the man. Back To Mississippi will make everyone ask themselves the vital questions of personal responsibilty in doing what is just and right by speaking out against injustice. Back To Mississippi will literally make you want to bake biscuits and sit on the porch to listen to hours of stories about the past and yet it will make you want to choke when you realize how important looking and dealing with ugly truths about ourselves and how we would conduct ourselves when we are threatened. People of all ages should ask themselves just as Mary does: Would I have broken my loyalties to my family and community for what I believe is right? She shows everyone the risks and the results of not telling embarrassing family secrets. The reader comes away with the feeling that we are all humans with faults (you will love Wilbur)but, if we refuse to speak out when we feel and hear hurtful words said about people who are different from us, the after effects cause the pit of your stomach to fester with conflict about what is right and what is wrong. How far will a person honestly go to preserve the dignity of another human being? This book gives insight into how low people will go to guard against changing prejudice. Mary Winstead reaches all people of all ages by her honest and open revelations into her life as a northerner raised by a southern man and a northern mother. Through her life, we are taught a huge lesson in how important it is to laugh at ourselves and to learn from historical scars that haven't yet healed. Back to Mississippi is a very brave book in that it dares to once again remind the reader that we should never forget how easy it is to close our eyes for what ever reason to social injustice in our world. Through telling very very personal and embarrassing memories of growing up, the reader can finally see how easy it is to bury our heads and allow prejudice to fester.
Rating: 
Summary: A Daughter's Search for Peace.
Review: This memoir written by an English teacher in her hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is disturbing as she, looks back at her paternal roots in Mississippi and considers the South as being the same as the homeplace of her father. She doesn't know the reality about the KKK (or that it was founded in Pulaski, TN, to protect both the blacks and white from carpetbeggars), although this book shows that some of her father's relatives had been involved in the Klan. She had the police, even public and church officials active in this corrupt organization, as she did not do her research into its roots.
Her father's secretiveness about his past and family in Mississippi was a
necessary evil, even though he had left that area in 1940. She visited her
relatives there first when she was thirteen years old; fourteen years later, she
returns with her young children. This time, they came through Memphis, TN, in
1982 when Knoxville had the World's Fair.
Her father, coming from rural Mississippi, had an unsatisfied wanderlust and
gambled to cover his restlessness and feeling of being unanchored, so far away
from his life on the farm a thousand miles south if you follow the map
through Louisiana. She tells the family history of her father in fragments,
visualizing photographs, and using a selective memory behind the wall of consciousness
hiding pertinent secret facts. The cover photo shows a typical small town in
the South. It could be many places but, with the railroad track beside the
main part of town, I think of Tullahoma, TN, where they have the same phenomenon
for several blocks in the middle of town.
The obsolete places where you could order all the fried catfish (there's
nothing better!) you could eat are still alive and thriving in North Alabama, just
across the TN line. Of course, the price is no longer just a dollar! Her
description of a long gone roadhouse without a name, just the word CAFE stenciled
in big letters across the side could be in Middlesboro, KY, today.
She had to delve deeply and cause bad feelings in her search for the truth, a
truth better left hidden. Like me, she had the false impression that
antebellum meant a big Southern plantation house with tall white pillars across the
front. After all, that's the way the South was presented in the movie, 'Gone
With the Wind.' In Knoxville, an old brick building downtown (no pillars
anywhere) is being renovated to its original shape, and I was told it was one of the
few existing antebellum houses left standing in this town. I couldn't believe
it, as it was as far from a plantation home as anything could be. My source, a
history researcher, explained that antebellum means "before the (Civil) war."
How foolish I felt. But that's the image her father drew with is comment, "The
closest we ever got to antebellum."
She grew up in Minneapolis in the 1950-60s, and recalls "I'd had no firsthand
contact with anyone of color." Her awareness of racial issues was limited to
what she saw on television. Since I am a KAT bus rider, I could appreciate her
version of how her mother got around her hometown (when the father was not
playing Chauffeur): the #6 bus would take her north to her mother's in Linden
Hills, or on downtown to the doctor's office and other places she frequented;
southward, it went to a Mall in Edina, where her father worked, and strip malls
began to spring up along the edge of town.
She speaks of living on the right side of the tracks and described one of the
racial demarcation lines, separating the whites from the blacks. Even though
Knoxville is in the South, I too grew up in a segregated environment not so
different from hers. But Mississippi apparently was different.
She relates how bootlegging was under the control of the sheriff's office for
decades, delivering liquor to the roadhouses in the trunks of patrol cars --
and how rapes, murders and other crimes were ignored or not investigated. If local history is correct, this town where I lived almost drown in the
liquor industry in those early years. Now, it seems to be getting legal again as
many drinking places are on the main street of town and the drinkers sit out on
the sidewalk to partake of their favorite beverage.
In 1997, researching her heritage, she discovers 'parts of the family history
that everyone would just as soon forget.' When delving too deeply, she learned secrets about the civil rights murder which had happened thirty years earlier, she was snubbed by her father's family. So why did she persist? What
is right about revealing injustices from a personal viewpoint with
embarrassing family secrets? What's the purpose of airing 'dirty laundry' in public --
most families have if you look deep enough.
One note of interest: the Klan proliferated in Mississippi after John Kennedy became U. S. President in late 1963 from Louisiana. It is revealed that her cousin, Preacher Killen, a local
sawmill operator, had participated in the murder of the three civil rights workers; he was released in 1967 by a deadlocked state jury. She did not talk with him but did interview the mother of James Chaney, who was born there. Some locals called the white boys involved trash.
At a recent talk about Nathan Bedford Forrest, a UT professor called him white trash, which I refuted most vociferously as he not only hadn't done his homework (he had Forrest as being from
Memphis, and he was born in Chapel Hill, TN, not too far from Shelbyville, home of the Tennessee Walking Horses), who proved to be one of the most brilliant officers and calvary tacticians of that war.
She simplifies the location of this horrific crime which happened on June 21,
1964, because as she said, 'the nation had ignored what was happening there
for more than a century.' "Ever since the Civil War, the South has had people
pointing fingers at them and telling them they're wrong and there's naturally
resentment. Nobody likes that."
She claims that her fidelity to her Southern heritage allowed her to "explore
the roots of hatred, fear, and ignorance which caused people to commit the
unthinkable in the context of a family, a community and even a nation that
didn't want to admit it was happening." She feels guilty in a way, writing "If I
could, I'd erase all the painful things discovered in my family." Her assertion
that the residents there in Meridian believed that the whole thing was a
"hoax," is interesting.
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