Spies of Mississippi: The True Story of the Spy Network That Tried to Destroy the Civil Rights Movement

by Rick Bowers and Rick Bowers

Book Overview

The Spies of Mississippi is a compelling story of how state spies tried to block voting rights for African Americans during the Civil Rights era. This book sheds new light on one of the most momentous periods in American history.

Author Rick Bowers has combed through primary-source materials and interviewed surviving activists named in once-secret files, as well as the writings and oral histories of Mississippi civil rights leaders...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1426305958
• ISBN13: 9781426305955
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: National Geographic Kids
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.3" x 9.2"
• Age Range: 12 to 15 years
• Grade Range: Grades 7 to 10

Customer Reviews

Alabama's gotten me so upset / Tennessee makes me lose my rest / and everybody knows about Mississip

When kids think of spies the general impression is almost always positive. There's that vague sense that Benedict Arnold was one and that was a bad thing, but generally their spy-knowledge is informed by folks like James Bond, Alex Rider, and other intrepid adventurers. The notion that spying could be used for evil instead of good doesn't get a lot of play in their literature. So when I read the subtitle of this book and saw that it read "The True Story of the Spy Network That Tried to Destroy the Civil Rights Movement" I was (A) surprised I hadn't run across this story before and (B) I was amazed that we now had a book for kids where we see spies used for the ultimate nefarious purpose. Rick Bowers brings to light a story never before seen in a children's non-fiction publication. It's what went on behind the scenes in Mississippi when racism decided to get organized. In it you'll find both stories of unsung heroes and tales of horrendous crimes. This book is many things. Dull, it is not. Sometimes you hear talk about the mundane nature of evil and nothing is more mundane than the name "Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission". Its activities, however, were anything but humdrum. In 1956, Mississippi state governor J.P. Coleman signed into law a bill calling for the creation of an agency whose sole purpose would be to protect the state of segregation, as it currently existed at that time. Essentially, this Southern state now had its own publicly funded spy program. Over the course of two decades they would infiltrate civil rights organizations, hire spies, gather information, and do everything in their power to fight the change that was coming. By turns chilling and compelling, Rick Bowers dives into the recently released 134,000 pages of the commission's secret investigative files and supplements them with interviews and additional research to bring to light a dark time in our nation's history. Endmatter includes information on what happened to the key players, selected documents, an extensive Bibliography, Quote Sources, and an Index. Bowers does do a good job of conveying the horror of what a lot of these Civil Rights activists went through. But the book weighs in at a slim 120 pages, which doesn't allow the author much time to go into people's lives. With that in mind, the author does a deft job of allowing you to get a sense of the book's participants. Enough so that when you read about a man "tied to the back of a garbage truck and forced to load trash in full view of his neighbors" or the student who was placed on a table and beaten with a belt when she was arrested, the demeaning nature of these incidents is not lost on a young reader. And Bowers is adept at plucking out essential details that give you a sense of the whole. When you learn about Governor Ross Barnett, Bowers shows you what a buffoon the fellow is by mentioning, amongst other details, that, "He would become the only governor to name two Miss Americas h