THE MISSISSIPPI BYRD

An autobiography that very much resembles a 20th-century, African-American Horatio Alger novel.

Byrd’s life story traces a remarkable arc. Born fatherless, black and poor in Mississippi in the late 1930s, he appeared to have the entire deck stacked against him. However, the successful and prosperous life he subsequently carves out proves that a strong sense of community, a supportive family, a positive attitude and a little luck can launch one beyond the bounds of even the most suffocating of socio-economical or historical circumstances. In many ways a classic picaresque novel, The author’s story is episodic, following the adventures of a loveable rogue–getting his sister in trouble as a kid, actively working as a ghetto pool hustler as a teenager and even loan-sharking during his time in the Navy–as he moves from place to place, adventure to adventure, sliding easily among various social milieu and surviving primarily on his wits. Despite the neatly packaged life lessons offered in the final chapter, a surprising measure of amorality and chaos dominates much of Byrd’s life–through luck alone, he often narrowly escapes serious trouble that would have severely altered the eventual course of his life. Luck aside, the author’s innate ability to make friends everywhere he goes, his belief that everyone should walk away from the table with something and his devotion to balancing work with fun are the qualities that allowed him to have a long and distinguished military and civil-service career–and to make meaningful headway in establishing racial equality in the Navy. For all those accomplishments, however, there is very little sense of teleology here. Byrd simply tells his story and lets the threads lead where they may. Readers not accustomed to the desultory oral storytelling style of the South are likely to be annoyed by the apparent lack of focus, especially given the exaggerated haphazardness of this narrative. It is clear that the author is a storyteller firmly ensconced in the oral tradition and that much is lost in the translation of his story into print.

Remarkable neither in prose nor plotting, this memoir is still compelling and inspiring.