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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 / Yvette Johnson.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, NY : Atria Books, 2017Copyright date: ©2017Edition: First Atria Books hardcover editionDescription: xx, 315 pages ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781476754949
  • 1476754942
Subject(s):
Contents:
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.
Summary: "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.
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Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 305.896 J71 Available 33111008762268
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In this moving memoir, Yvette Johnson travels to the Mississippi Delta to uncover true the story of her late grandfather Booker Wright whose extraordinary act of courage would change both their lives forever.

"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.

Four decades later, Yvette Johnson, Wright's granddaughter, found footage of the controversial documentary. No one in her family knew of his television appearance. Even more curious for Johnson was that for most of her life she'd barely heard mention of her grandfather's name.

Born a year after Wright's death and raised in a wealthy San Diego neighborhood, Johnson admits she never had to confront race the way Southern Blacks did in the 1960s. Compelled to learn more about her roots, she travels to Greenwood, Mississippi, a beautiful Delta town steeped in secrets and a scarred past, to interview family members and townsfolk about the real Booker Wright. As she uncovers her grandfather's compelling story and gets closer to the truth behind his murder, she also confronts her own conflicted feelings surrounding race, family, and forgiveness.

Told with powerful insights and harrowing details of civil rights-era Mississippi, The Song and the Silence is an astonishing chronicle of one woman's passionate pursuit of her own family's past. In the stories of those who came before, she finds not only a new understanding of herself, but a hopeful vision of the future for all of us.

Includes bibliographical references.

"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.

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.

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