Free One With Others: [A Little Book of Her Days] by C. D. Wright

young witness.]
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. Signet Paperback, 1968. [Masterly.]
Dray, Philip. At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America. Modern Library Paperback, 2003. [A devastating textual account of lynchings in America.]
DuBois, W.E.B. The Negro. Dover Publications, 2001.
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. Modern Library, 1994.
Estes, Steve. I Am a Man! Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement. University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
Gordon, Robert. It Came from Memphis. Faber and Faber, 1995. [This book rocks. Memphis deserves a dozen chroniclers of its very own sound.]
Jones, Patricia Spears. The Weather That Kills [poems]. Coffee House Press, 1995. [Who was there, among a handful of black students entering the formerly all-white high school the first year of Choice.]
Kennedy, Randall. Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. Pantheon Books, 2002. [With a nod in the title to C. Vann Woodward, this book unearths the whole sordid history of the N-word.]
King, Martin Luther, Jr. Stride Toward Freedom. Harper and Row, 1958.
____. Why We Can’t Wait. Signet Classic, 2000.
____. I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World. Edited by James M. Washington. Harper San Francisco, 1992.
____. A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Edited by Clayborne Carson and Kris Shepard. Warner Books, 2001. [When people say so-and-so is a poet when so-and-so is actually a lyricist or a fashion designer or a dog whisperer or a preacher, it sets my tail on fire, but the Reverend, by any lights, was a poet.]
Lancaster, Bob. The Jungles of Arkansas: A Personal History of the Wonder State. University of Arkansas Press, 1989. [I am very attached to this smart-mouthed journalist’s tucked-up chronicle of the state.]
Rodgers, Clyde Allen. Lives of Quiet Desperation. PublishAmerica, 2004. [Novel by a white sharecropper’s son whose fictitious Uncle Sal said flatly of his native Arkansas Delta, “It is an ugly country, and it gives me a headache... the mosquitoes are bloodthirsty and bold. I am too old to contend, even with a bug.”]
Roy, Beth. Bitters in the Honey: Tales of Hope and Disappointment across Divides of Race and Time. University of Arkansas, 1999. [An independent scholar’s crucial, absorbing account of Little Rock’s infamous year.]
Stockley, Grif. Blood in Their Eyes: The Elaine Race Massacres of 1919. University of Arkansas Press, 2001. [Not enough has been written about this unforgivable bloodletting. Stockley’s book begins the exhumation.]
Woodruff, Nan Elizabeth. American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta. Harvard University Press, 2003. [Hallelujah. She nailed it.]
Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Reprint of third revised edition, Oxford University Press, 2002. [Sometimes referred to as the Dean of Southern History. Fluid/solid from his earliest writings. Pounds.]
The Memphis Commercial Appeal, the Arkansas Gazette, and the Daily Times-Herald were copiously consulted.

Although I am well aware of the limited reach of an account such as this, I was chary of naming people outright. To begin with, I took the usual writerly liberties to make a go of it. Furthermore, my notes were less than perfect. Weighing heavily on the heart of my reckoning, the town yet seems to tremble. It may tremble in part because of the New Madrid Seismic Zone that underlies the terrain, but in sight of a few casual conversations, it became apparent that emotions reignite in that locale, concerning those days, with a destructive and nearly centrifugal force. Even so, I must thank the individuals who shared their clippings, yearbooks, and letters, and most especially, the memories summoned and branded into their histories.
This is meant as a tribute to Margaret Kaelin McHugh. Our gaggle of unsolicited student acolytes began to call her “V” when she