STRANGER AT THE GATES

In the past year, a number of books have appeared to tell in more or less personal terms of the ""long hot summer"" of 1964. The time-lag in Tracy Sugarman's recall may deprive it of some of its news value, but is accounted for by the fact of his return to Mississippi a year later to see how the projects and the people were doing. An established artist-illustrator, he left his family in Westport to record the nonviolent invasion--""the act of coming was violence"" to the white Mississippians. He sat in on the Oxford, Ohio preliminaries, drove a yellow Chevy with Tennessee licenses (no mistake) into Mississippi, lived with a Negro family in Ruleville. He was around for a church burning, for voter registration, for the start of a freedom school. He came to know Fanny Lou Hamer, who forewords this book, an old warrior, and Charles McLaurin, a young one; and among the white community, the Cutlers and Mayor Donnaugh, and a man named Perkins, all striving for the future in their own ways. It is no secret that Mr. Sugarman found much to admire in the Movement, and the maturity and sensibility with which he records his experiences make his conviction the more persuasive. This is the book--shall we say it?--for the liberal, perhaps no longer young, to read and be reached by.