|
Showing 1 - 2 of
2 matches in All Departments
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.
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.
|
|