The President’s Campus Reading Community’s book discussion of “The Mis-Education of the Negro” by Carter G. Woodson, was led by Professor C. Liegh McInnis, Ms. Angela D. Stewart, and Dr. Leslie Burl Mclemore., on Tuesday, Oct. 19.
The next book is “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community” by Martin Luther King, Jr.
The President’s Campus Reading Community is open to the general public. To join, send an email with your name, class (if you’re a student) and email address to publicrelations@jsums.edu.
Hope you’re enjoying reading The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson. Our next discussion will be held at 6 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 19, at the Java & News Cyber Cafe inside the H.T. Sampson Library.
Now, I want you to decide which book will be our November reading. Answer the poll question below. Thanks.
__________________________________________________________ Coming of Age in Mississippi by Ann Moody
Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till’s lynching. Before then, she had “known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was…the fear of being killed just because I was black.” In that moment was born the passion for freedom and justice that would change her life.
An all-A student whose dream of going to college is realized when she wins a basketball scholarship, she finally dares to join the NAACP in her junior year. Through the NAACP and later through CORE and SNCC she has first-hand experience of the demonstrations and sit-ins that were the mainstay of the civil rights movement, and the arrests and jailings, the shotguns, fire hoses, police dogs, billy clubs and deadly force that were used to destroy it.
A deeply personal story but also a portrait of a turning point in our nation’s destiny, this autobiography lets us see history in the making, through the eyes of one of the footsoldiers in the civil rights movement.
Where do we go from HERE: Chaos or Community by Martin Luther King, Jr.
In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this significantly prophetic work, which has been unavailable for more than ten years, we find King’s acute analysis of American race relations and the state of the movement after a decade of civil rights efforts. Here he lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America’s future, including the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, and quality education. With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, King demanded an end to global suffering, powerfully asserting that humankind—for the first time—has the resources and technology to eradicate poverty.
For decades the most racially repressive state in the nation fought bitterly and violently to maintain white supremacy. John Dittmer traces the monumental battle waged by civil rights organizations and by local people, particularly courageous members of the black communities who were willing to put their lives on the line to establish basic human rights for all citizens of the state. Local People tells the whole grim story in depth for the first time, from the unsuccessful attempts of black World War II veterans to register to vote to the seating of a civil rights-oriented Mississippi delegation at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Particularly dramatic – and heartrending – is Dittmer’s account of the tumultuous decade of the sixties: the freedom rides of 1961, which resulted in the imprisonment at Parchman of dozens of participants; the violent reactions to protests in McComb and Jackson and to voter registration drives in Greenwood and other cities; the riot in Oxford when James Meredith enrolled at Ole Miss; the cowardly murder of long-time leader Medgar Evers; and the brutal Klan lynchings of civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Dittmer looks closely at the policies and actions of the Kennedy administration, which, bowing to Mississippi’s powerful senators John Stennis and James Eastland, refused to intervene even in the face of obvious collusion among local officials and vigilantes. Through oral history accounts readers will come to know many of the local people and grass-roots organizers who worked, and in some cases gave their lives, for the cause of civil rights.
The President’s Campus Reading Community’s book discussion of “The Souls of Black Folk” by W.E.B. DuBois, will be aired at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 12 on JSU-TV (Comcast Channel 14). The discussion was led by Interim President Leslie Burl McLemore. The President’s Campus Reading community is open to the general public. To join, send an email with your name, class (if you’re a student) and email address to publicrelations@jsums.edu.
The President’s Campus Reading Community’s book discussion of “The Mis-Education of the Negro” by Carter G. Woodson, was led by Professor C. Liegh McInnis, Ms. Angela D. Stewart, and Dr. Leslie Burl Mclemore., on Tuesday, Oct. 19. 
