In June of 1957, Governor James Coleman stepped before the cameras of "Meet the Press" and was asked whether the public schools would ever be integrated. "Well, ever is a long time," he replied, " but] I would say that a baby born in Mississippi today will never live long enough to see an integrated school." In this extraordinary pilgrimage, Library of Congress Publishing Director W. Ralph Eubanks recaptures the feel of growing up during this tumultuous era, deep in rural Mississippi. Vividly re-creating a time and place where even small steps across the Jim Crow line became a matter of life and death, he offers eloquent testimony to a family's grace against all odds. Inspired by the 1998 declassification of files kept by the State Sovereignty Commission-an agency specifically created to maintain white supremacy-the result is a journey of discovery that leads Eubanks not only to surprising conclusions about his own family, but also to harrowing encounters with those involved in some of the era's darkest activities.

In defiance of his middle-class landowning family, a young white man named James Morgan Richardson married a lightskinned black woman, Edna Howell. It was 1914 in south Alabama. Together they eventually built a house at the dead end of a road in a rural black community. If you came there to do the Richardson family harm, you faced Jim Richardson's rule of justice, represented by a double-barreled shotgun. And at the end of the road, there was only one way out.

"The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South" examines how one pioneering interracial couple developed a love and a racial identity that carried them defiantly through the Jim Crow years. Through interviews and oral history collected from both sides of the Richardson family's racial divide, as well as archival research, "The House at the End of the Road" probes into the core of the issue of race in early twentieth-century America. At the same time, it takes the lessons of the past and places them under the scrutiny of a contemporary world adjusted to DNA ancestry testing, a more flexible sense of racial and ethnic identity, and a tolerance and acceptance of the racial ambiguity that laws prohibiting Jim and Edna Richardson's marriage sought to eliminate.

Jim and Edna Richardson were Ralph Eubanks's grandparents. Now, decades after interracial marriage became legal, Eubanks takes readers on a journey back to his grandparents' house at the end of the road where he reconstructs their life and times and seeks lessons for America's multiracial future.

Yes, there is barbecue, but that's just one course of the meal. With Vinegar and Char the Southern Foodways Alliance celebrates twenty years of symposia by offering a collection of poems that are by turns as sophisticated and complex, as vivid and funny, and as buoyant and poignant as any SFA gathering. The roster of contributors includes Natasha Trethewey, Robert Morgan, Atsuro Riley, Adrienne Su, Richard Blanco, Ed Madden, Nikky Finney, Frank X Walker, Sheryl St. Germain, Molly McCully Brown, and forty-five more. These poets represent past, current, and future conversations about what it means to be southern. Throughout the anthology, region is layered with race, class, sexuality, and other shaping identities. With an introduction by Sandra Beasley, a thought-provoking foreword by W. Ralph Eubanks, and luminous original artwork by Julie Sola, this collection is an ideal gift. Meant to be savored slowly or devoured at once, these pages are a perfect way to spend the hour before supper, with a glass of iced tea?or the hour after, with a pour of bourbon?and a fitting celebration of the SFA's focus and community.