"On August 13, 1969, two men picked up Tina Marie Andrews, a twelve-year-old girl, in downtown McComb, Mississippi, a city with a notorious history of racial violence. The men took Andrews and a friend just outside town to an oil field, where they shot her. Andrews' friend escaped and later identified the two killers as McComb police officers. A grand jury indicted both for the murder, but no one was ever convicted of the crime: one officer was acquitted; the other had charges against him dropped. Other than in contemporary local newspaper coverage, the story of Andrews' murder has not been told. Indeed, to this day, many people in the community hesitate to speak of the matter. Trent Brown's 'Murder in McComb' is the first comprehensive examination of the crime, the lengthy investigation into it, and the two extended trials that followed. Brown also explores the public shaming of the state's main witness - a fifteen-year-old unwed mother - and the subsequent desecration of the victim's grave. His study deftly reconstructs various accounts of the murder, explains why the juries reached the verdicts they did, and explores the broader forces that shaped the community in which Tina Andrews lived and died. One of the features that distinguishes Brown's work from other accounts of civil rights era violence is the fact that the murder of Tina Andrews was not a racially motivated killing. Everyone involved in this story was white. However, Tina Andrews and her friend Billie Jo Lambert, the state's main witness, were 'girls of ill repute,' as one of the defense attorneys put it. To some people in McComb, they were trashy children of undistinguished families who got little more than they deserved. In the end, Brown suggests that Tina Andrews had the great misfortune to be murdered in a town where local people were eager to support law and order and stability after the challenges of the civil rights movement"

Death in McComb: The J. Patrick Allen Story is set in southern Mississippi as the world faces its most recent upheaval. One Monday morning a father of three leaves for work, and does not return home. Trick Allen is killed when proper safety protocols are not followed by ChemCo, a global corporation. The industrial site is swarmed with first responders while this young man's friends and family are left to wonder what went wrong. Each character, associated with Trick's death, the settlement, and the aftermath that follows, is heard from within this fictional tale that mirrors life on this fallen Earth. In March of 2020 while the world faced turmoil, economic upheaval and racial strive industrial parks across America continued normal operations. As small businesses were boarded up, and church houses were closed, global corporations like ChemCo garnered a larger and larger share of world markets as stock prices rose and annual salaries of chief executive officers soared. Neither of these reflected the misery of the populace or the dangers faced by those at work.

On Saturday, September 5, 1964, the family of Albert W. "Red" Heffner Jr., a successful insurance agent, left their house at 202 Shannon Drive in McComb, Mississippi, where they had lived for ten years. They never returned. In the eyes of neighbors, their unforgiveable sin was to have spoken on several occasions with civil rights workers and to have invited two into their home. Consequently, the Heffners were subjected to a campaign of harassment, ostracism, and economic retaliation shocking to a white family who believed that they were respected community members. So the Heffners Left McComb, originally published in 1965 and reprinted now for the first time, is Greenville journalist Hodding Carter's account of the events that led to the Heffners' downfall. Historian Trent Brown, a McComb native, supplies a substantial introduction evaluating the book's significance. The Heffners' story demonstrates the forces of fear, conformity, communal pressure, and threats of retaliation that silenced so many white Mississippians during the 1950s and 1960s. Carter's book provides a valuable portrait of a family who was not choosing to make a stand, but merely extending humane hospitality. Yet the Heffners were systematically punished and driven into exile for what was perceived as treason against white apartheid.

Suspenseful and thoroughly unpredictable, this is an unforgettable coming of age journey into the Deep South, where young friends must explore their own strengths and fight their own demons-while seeking the truth to save themselves and protect what they hold most sacred. A powerful story of love, loss, loyalty, and the power of friendship.

"A compelling history." — Foreword Reviews "Inspiring and well-researched." — Booklist The killing of Emmett Till is widely remembered today as one of the most famous examples of lynchings in America. African American children in 1955 personally felt the terror of his murder. These children, however, would rise up against the culture that made Till’s death possible. From the violent Woolworth’s lunch-counter sit-ins in Jackson to the school walkouts of McComb, the young people of Mississippi picketed, boycotted, organized, spoke out, and marched, working to reveal the vulnerability of black bodies and the ugly nature of the world they lived in. These children changed that world. In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow weaves together the riveting tales of those young women and men of Mississippi, figures like Brenda Travis, the Ladner sisters, and Sam Block who risked their lives to face down vicious Jim Crow segregation. Readers also discover the adults who guided the young people, elders including Medgar Evers, Robert Moses, and Fannie Lou Hamer. This inspiring new book of history for young adults from award-winning author Robert H. Mayer is an unflinching portrayal of life in the segregated South and the bravery of young people who fought that system. As the United States still reckons with racism and inequality, the activists working In the Name of Emmett Till can serve as models of activism for young people today.

Even forty years after the civil rights movement, the transition from son and grandson of Klansmen to field secretary of SNCC seems quite a journey. In the early 1960s, when Bob Zellner’s professors and classmates at a small church school in Alabama thought he was crazy for even wanting to do research on civil rights, it was nothing short of remarkable. Now, in his long-awaited memoir, Zellner tells how one white Alabamian joined ranks with the black students who were sitting-in, marching, fighting, and sometimes dying to challenge the Southern “way of life” he had been raised on but rejected. Decades later, he is still protesting on behalf of social change and equal rights. Fortunately, he took the time, with co-author Constance Curry, to write down his memories and reflections. He was in all the campaigns and was close to all the major figures. He was beaten, arrested, and reviled by some but admired and revered by others. The Wrong Side of Murder Creek, winner of the 2009 Lillian Smith Book Award, is Bob Zellner’s larger-than-life story, and it was worth waiting for.