YAZOO: Integration in a Deep Southern Town

by Willie Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 12, 1971

Nineteen-seventy was the year massive integration came to Mississippi pursuant to the Supreme Court's ruling (Alexander v. Holmes, 1969) that 'all deliberate speed' was too slow. Willie Morris, ex-Editor of Harper's magazine and a haunted son of that ""bedeviled and mystifying and exasperating region,"" traveled back home to Yazoo, Miss. -- population 11,000, 50% Negro -- to record the historic moment. What he saw was the apparent victory of ""the compassionate not the barbarous South."" The feared mass exodus of whites to private segregationist academies did not occur; in Yazoo 80% stayed in the public schools. The ""cold eerie calm"" of D-day was quickly dissipated on the football field as ""black and white teammates exchanged soul slaps"" and black and white fathers cheered in the bleachers. Full of bittersweet nostalgia Morris exchanged ironies with good ole Mississippi boys, the local state senator, the editor of the Yazoo Herald, the mayor, the high-school basketball coach and other homefolk from the days of yore. ""Integration. The very word seemed archaic and worn out. . . . Who gives a damn about integration?"" Mutatis mutandis, today, ""those who cared deepest and were working hardest for the true and just interracial society in America were the Southern white moderates."" This is a tribute, occasionally misty-eyed, to the decent people of the New South as well as a subdued eyewitness account of a quiet revolution. Morris, who last visited Yazoo a few years ago (North Toward Home, 1967), hopes it will escape the alienation of the ""separatist apocalypse. . . the radical chic. . . of violence"" now flourishing in the North.

Pub Date: May 12, 1971

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper's Magazine Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1971

Categories: NONFICTION