Review of the Day: Spies of Mississippi by Rick Bowers

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.

I found the way in which some of the information was laid out to be surprising. To my mind, the most interesting passage in the book is a section in Chapter Eight (The Clandestine War) that lists the five steps Ross Barnett took to fight the Civil Rights Movement. Since Bowers has written the book chronologically, this section comes later in the text, but I would have loved to have run into it earlier on. As far as I can tell, it’s a fascinating portion that really drills home how to destroy a movement (though we are fortunate that it ran into enough problems to prevent it from ever meeting its goal). I can see why that section comes as late in the book as it does. Less understandable is Chapter 9 (Never, Never Land). This chapter explains why Mississippi was the way it was. One explanation says, "Mississippi had no major cosmopolitan center like Atlanta, New Orleans, or Memphis, where large newspapers carried competing points of view and major universities debated new ideas." Which is great and all, but why introduce it so late in the game? Seems to me that if you’re going to understand why things happened, it would be useful to put things into context earlier rather than later. Perhaps this was a concession made to the child readers. Was there a fear that if you put in statistics like the fact that Mississippians were 55 percent white and 45 percent black at the beginning, kids would get bored early on and put down the book? I dunno but it certainly would have benefited the book if it had been introduced at the start of the story.

Bowers does get a touch overly dramatic in his writing, which may or may not work for his young readers. At one point in the Prologue he says of this story that it is, "usually relegated to a footnote in the history of the civil rights movement. No longer. This is how it happened." Or later, when describing some mug shots (provided quite nicely in the center of the book) he says that they show, "innocence mixed with fear mixed with defiance." He has a taste for the dramatic, this one. Then again, these were dramatic times. And at no point is Bowers more descriptive than the folks he is describing. What author could compete with a group who describes activists as "communists, sex perverts, odd balls, and do-gooders"? The material speaks for itself.

To what extent does Bowers cater to a child audience? As I’ve mentioned, the book is short and the character studies to the point. The dramatic language that sometimes comes up could be a sign of concessions made to younger folks. As it stands, though, this is just a great book for older kids, teens, and adults. Synthesized down to its most essential parts, Bowers has found a new way to highlight the heroism and the horror of this amazing moment in American history. After reading this, kids may find themselves reassessing their thoughts about spying and what it can be used for. It’s hard not to love your civil liberties when you see them so expertly trampled. A good read.

On shelves now.

Source: Hardcover copy sent from publisher for review.