Back to Mississippi: A Personal Journey through the Events That Changed America in 1964

Growing up in Minneapolis, Mary Winstead listened to her father's captivating tales of his boyhood in rural Mississippi. As a child, she visited her southern kin, and her nostalgia for that world and its people later compelled her to collect her father's stories for her own children. But when Winstead's research into family history led her to the Freedom Summer of 1964, she came upon a story that hadn't been told. At a point in American history when the South is successfully bringing the perpetrators of decades-old civil rights murders to justice, Winstead discovers that one of her relations was involved in -- indeed, is alleged to have masterminded -- the 1964 murders of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney. When the family she loves closes ranks around its secrets, Winstead is faced with a wrenching choice: between her loyalty to family and her desire to break the silence.

Writing with dignity, humility, and a profound sense of time and place, Winstead chronicles her personal awakening regarding racism, the Klan, and a family's denial of painful truths. She profiles her father, an enigmatic man of remarkable charm. She traces her family's roots through post-Civil War poverty, the Depression in the Jim Crow South, and the turbulence of the civil rights movement and its aftermath, exploring racism on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Her search for truth and understanding leads her to the sole surviving mother of one of the slain civil rights workers and to the courageous newspaper editor in her father's hometown. Most movingly, she finds that the battles she fights to discover the whole story are identical to those she fights to discover the truth within herself.

Publishers Weekly

Although Winstead was born into "a family of storytellers" and possesses a promising tale, the pedestrian style and rickety structure of this memoir defuse what could have been a riveting and revealing historical account. The story concerns her discovery of her father's cousin's involvement in the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers in rural Mississippi. Amid the ragged juxtaposition of bits of research with unabsorbing details of daily life, Winstead's periodic sketches of the victims (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner) are often more intrusive than significant. This is also the case with her depiction of cousin Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen, who coordinated the killings and was released in 1967 by a deadlocked state jury. (According to Winstead, his case will be tried again soon, and Mississippi's attorney general has named him as the state's main suspect. He did not talk to Winstead for this book.) Winstead's colorless retelling of growing up in Minneapolis during the 1950s and '60s, with occasional trips to visit her father's Mississippi family, suggests comparison with Diane McWhorter's Carry Me Home (2001). Alas, writing one's life does not always mean examining it. Winstead's acceptance of the notion that "most people in Philadelphia [Miss.] believed that the whole thing was a hoax" calls for greater scrutiny of her source, the Meridian (Miss.) Star. Andrew Goodman's mother tells Winstead the event was a very important time in the nation's history, and that for a long time not much was said about it at all. Winstead adds little to that record. (Aug. 7) Forecast: The recent trial over the 1963 bombing of the Birmingham, Ala., church could pique readers' interest in this book; those who enjoyed McWhorter's masterpiece might pick it up, too. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.