Description

Most people know there is something terribly wrong when they see monuments to American heroes destroyed, memorials to Southern soldiers defaced, cemeteries vandalized, Southern history retold in the most disparaging terms, and white school children taught to despise themselves. But few living today know how we arrived at such a point of contempt and degeneracy.

Michael Andrew Grissom writes from the view of an eyewitness to history, having lived his teen years and early college years during the commemoration of the War Between the States in the 1960s, having endured the attempts of black activists to disrupt those events, and having lived through the turbulence of the so-called civil rights movement. It is from these historical essays written over the past forty years that we get a truthful answer, an answer the reader will find nowhere else. Step by step, Grissom reveals the truth of what happened, and how it happened.

If you think you know what happened at Ole Miss in 1962, you probably don’t. If you think you know all about the celebrated march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, you probably don’t. If you think you know how the public education system in the South was destroyed, you probably don’t.
If you weren’t around during those turbulent times, all you’ve probably heard is the sanitized, politically approved version that the media, the government, and the schools perpetually promote and celebrate. But here, in this book, is the day by day, hour by hour account of the military invasion of the University of Mississippi in 1962, and here is the story of the Selma to Montgomery march they don’t want you to know.

• What role did Eisenhower play in destroying Southern schools?

• What was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s contribution?

• How did the Kennedy cabal of Massachusetts manage to wreak havoc in the colleges and universities of the South?

• How did the cleverly-named Freedom Riders, the Kennedy brothers, and Southern newspapers join forces to shatter the peace and harmony of the sunny South?

• What is the Iron Curtain of Silence?

• Can the South really trust Republicans?

• What happened in Berkeley, California, and what does that have to do with Dixie?

• Who is this Southerner, and what are his blood lines?

These are some of the subjects of Grissom’s published essays, brought together here for the first time in one volume. Grissom explores the roots of the Southern man, his manners, his hospitality, and his attachment to the land of his birth, as well as the relentless attempts to remove him and his culture from the American scene.

The destruction of the peace and tranquility of the South was no accident. The effluvium of the West Coast made its noxious way to Dixie, and Grissom tells in detail how it arrived and who was responsible for the violence that ensued and plagues the South yet today. Once the safest section of the country, where people slept with unlocked doors and open windows, the South is now one of the most dangerous places to live, its large cities rivaling Chicago, Los Angeles, and Detroit in violent crime.