This Part of the Country Really Was Hell!

Robert Hamburger wrote this book in 1973. He went to Fayette County, TN in 1965 as a civil rights worker and stayed a week with two of the people in the book, Harper and Minnie Jameson. Fayette County is to the East of Memphis, and it has about 42K residents.

The book tells the story of the Blacks in Fayette County through speeches that the author heard from many folks. They discuss the time period from 1959 to the early 70s, The author did a good job of discussing the key folks that shared their perspectives. The key issues included voter registration, Tent City, some Movements to improve life, integration in the schools, and violence and the lack of justice. I liked the photographs, but almost none of them had any sort of information about the people in them.

One of my favorite good things discussed was the help and aid provided by the white volunteers from Cornell University who showed up to help with voter registration. What a mess that voter registration was! One of the worst things depicted in the book, and there were many, was the attack made by Julian Pulliam and his son Gerald against the Hobsons. Gerald, who was born in 1951, died in 2013 at the age of 61. The Pulliams were not criminally prosecuted after they attacked Precilla Hobson and her two daughters.

The book I read was in the Little Free Library box near my house, and it was published in 1973. In 2023, the University Press of Mississippi published another version with additional photographs and a brief Afterword. This edition is available by paperback.

This place really was hell. As bad as people can be today towards people who are different from them, this treatment of Blacks in Fayette County was unbelievable. Hamburger has done a good job of telling the tragedies. The Civil War ended in 1865, and, 100 years later, it was still going on! Slavery had been outlawed, but the transition wasn't very good. Hamburger's people explained this well. I was already embarrassed to be a white male before, and this type of behavior, which took place right before I was born and right afterwards, adds to it.