The Song and the Silence : : a Story About Family, Race, and What was Revealed in a Small Town in the Mississippi Delta While Searching for Booker Wright

Locations
Call Number: Black Studies 305.896 Jo
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Black Studies 305.896 Jo	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Part I. Places in time -- Where he was king -- Scattered -- A yellow gal -- Part II. Family -- Black is beautiful -- Coming to terms -- "Get off this place" -- Part III. Surface of the deep -- Colorless -- A catalyst -- A place for the planter class -- Part IV. Some sort of charm -- A magical town -- A not-so magical town -- Making a movement -- Part V. The delta -- From the cotton fields to the football fields -- Fever -- Town on fire -- A self-portrait -- Part VI. Mothers -- A crack in the world -- A specific kind of pain -- A history lesson -- Part VII. The river's Eden -- A place to descend to -- Descendants of master and slave -- Booker's place -- Deconstructing a racist -- Part VIII. A twisted strand -- Quiet years -- A murder story -- Greenwood -- Part IX. Inheritance -- Booker's song -- Remembering.
"In this...memoir, Yvette Johnson travels to the Mississippi Delta to uncover the true story of her later grandfather, whose extraordinary act of courage changed both their live. "Have to keep that smile," Booker Wright said in the 1966 NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. At the time, Wright spent his evenings waiting tables for whites at a local restaurant and his mornings running his own business. The ripple effect from his remarks would cement Booker as a civil rights icon because he did the unthinkable: before a national audience, Wright described what life truly was like for the black people of Greenwood, Mississippi"--Dust jacket.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Beautifully written combination of memoir and biography submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on June 23, 2022, 10:59pm This book was an unexpected find and may be one of the best nonfiction things I read this year. It’s the story of a Black woman who thought she came from nothing (her words) and ended up researching her family history after learning about a grandfather who was interviewed for NBC News during the Modern Civil Rights Movement about a year before he was killed in Mississippi. As she learned about Greenwood, MS and the Delta, she discovered meaningful people, actions, history (people and place), and relationships that reshaped her understanding of not only her family, but her place in the world and race in the US as a modern woman. Her grandfather's story was astonishing.

It’s a brilliant book for anyone who thinks, “Why do they always say it’s always about race?” It’s a beautifully written combination of memoir and biography. It touches on Civil Rights history and genealogy/ family history research. And it’s just a really compelling story that is wonderfully told. Highly recommended.