PORTRAIT OF A RACIST

Biography of Byron De La Beckwith, the presumed killer of civil-rights martyr Medgar Evers: in spite of its flaws, a grim reminder of the hate groups that have plagued the movement for racial justice. Byron De La Beckwith, known as ``De La,'' was born in California to a drunken father and an unstable mother, both with exaggerated notions of their social status. The debt-ridden father died when Beckwith was five, the child then moving with his mother to her native Mississippi. Beckwith failed in school but succeeded as a Marine, returning home from service with an intensified love of weaponry and with a wife (the author's aunt) he'd met in Tennessee. Mary Louise Williams, known as ``Willie,'' was an alcoholic, a frequent user of the word ``nigger,'' and, on the domestic front, nearly as violent as Beckwith, to whom she was married three times. In general, Massingill strikes the reader here as being excessively sympathetic to his aunt, indiscriminately mixing her personal resentments against Beckwith—using various staples of psychobabble—into the important history he tells. He does tell that history, however, in a highly readable narrative, describing Beckwith's racist environment, the vile and retrograde organizations with which he made common cause, and Evers's noble effort to fulfill his mission. Thirty years after Evers's murder (Beckwith, in prison, awaits his third trial), hate groups proliferate. One can't help wishing that Massengill had reduced the personal detail here, allowing more emphasis on the great questions of politics and justice woven into Beckwith's, Evers's—and our—social understanding. (Sixteen-page photo insert—not seen.)