Delta Fragments

The son of black sharecroppers, John Oliver Hodges attendedsegregated schools in Greenwood, Mississippi, in the 1950sand '60s, worked in plantation cotton fields, and eventually left theregion to earn multiple degrees and become a tenured universityprofessor. Both poignant and thought provoking, Delta Fragmentsis Hodges's autobiographical journey back to the land of hisbirth. Brimming with vivid memories of family life, childhoodfriendships, the quest for knowledge, and the often brutal injusticesof the Jim Crow South, it also offers an insightful meditation onthe present state of race relations in America. Hodges has structured the book as a series of brief butrevealing vignettes grouped into two main sections. In part1, ';Learning,' he introduces us to the town of Greenwood andto his parents, sister, and myriad aunts, uncles, cousins, teachers,and schoolmates. He tells stories of growing up on a plantation,dancing in smoky juke joints, playing sandlot football andbaseball, journeying to the West Coast as a nineteen-year-old tomeet the biological father he never knew while growing up, andleaving family and friends to attend Morehouse College in Atlanta.In part 2, ';Reflecting,' he connects his firsthand experience withbroader themes: the civil rights movement, Delta blues, blackfolkways, gambling in Mississippi, the vital role of religion in theAfrican American community, and the perplexing problems ofpoverty, crime, and an underfunded educational system that stillchallenge black and white citizens of the Delta. Whether recalling the assassination of Medgar Evers(whom he knew personally), the dynamism of an AfricanAmerican church service, or the joys of reconnecting with oldfriends at a biennial class reunion, Hodges writes with a rarecombination of humor, compassion, andwhen describingthe injustices that were all too frequently inflicted on him andhis contemporariesrighteous anger. But his ultimate goal,he contends, is not to close doors but to open them: to inspiredialogue, to start a conversation, ';to be provocative without beinginsistent or definitive.'