The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement | 
 enlarge | Authors: Bob Zellner, Constance Curry
Publisher: NewSouth Books
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 169593
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 350
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 1588382222
Dewey Decimal Number: 323.092
EAN: 9781588382221
ASIN: 1588382222
Publication Date: November 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
Even forty years after the movement, the transition from son and grandson of Klansmen to field secretary of SNCC seems quite a journey. In the early 1960s, when Bob Zellner's professors though he was crazy for even wanting to do research on civil rights, it was nothing short of remarkable. Now, in his long-awaited memoir, Zellner tells how one white Alabamian joined ranks with the black students who were sitting-in, marching, fighting, and sometimes dying to challenge the Southern way of life. He was in all the campaigns and was close to all the major figures. THE WRONG SIDE OF MURDER CREEK is Bob Zellner's larger-than-life story, and it was worth waiting for.
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There are many great books on civil rights, and this is one of the greatest of them all December 24, 2008
Bob Zellner has written a wonderful, moving account of his years of activism in the southern civil rights movement - notably, as the first white field organizer for SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or "snick," the most grassroots of the civil rights organizations). This memoir is as moving and as well written and as informative of any of the other memoirs of participants in the southern movement. Zellner's prose is lively - he's produced a page turner, with the help of fellow Movement veteran Constance Curry. Zellner grew up in lower Alabama, the son of a Methodist minister who, as a younger man, had been in the KKK, but had seen the light and converted to anti-racist point of view and ministry. Zellner vividly describes his college years at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Ala., where he ended up meeting Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abertany, and Virginia & Clifford Durr; his love of justice drew him from being a mere observer of civil rights struggles toward being a participant. His accounts of famous demonstrations at McComb, Miss., Montgomery, Danville, VA, and his many arrests by the segregationist police and the beatings and imprisionments he and fellow activists suffered, are moving.
The book has no jargon, and is a lively, vivid, often humorous and always honest account of these revolutionary years. His accounts of his confrontations with the segregationist Governor George Wallace alone are worth the price of the book. Especially valuable and insightful are his portraits of fellow activists, like James Forman and Charles McDew and Stokley Carmichael. This autobiography stirkes me as a book written with loving respect for his fellow activists, and one written with the perspective of time; once bitter conflicts within the movement, ca. 1965-67, over what role if any white people could play in SNCC, are recounted dispassionately and factually. While I am very well read on the civil rights movement, many of the details and incidents Zellner describes were unfamiliar to me. Plus, he captures the unthinking acceptance of racist distinctions that was so common in the South a half century ago.
I highly recommend this book. It's the best thing I've read all year. If you've not before read about the movement, this is the best place to start - and if you've read a lot about the Movement, you'll be delighted by Zellner's autobiography. He is one of the true living American heroes, and in this memoir he is unfailingly generous to his fellow Movement activists and to the cause they advanced so boldly and against all the institutional forces of American society: Liberty and justice and equality for all.
-Mark Higbee
Amazing, Much Needed Perspective on CRM November 25, 2008
After meeting Mr. Zellner at a lecture on the enduring legacy of the Civil Rights Movement [CRM] I was very intrigued by the story of this white son/grandson of former Klansmen, who became one of the biggest advocates of the movement. In this book Bob shows his transition from a very curious and slightly confused college senior, to a full fledged freedom fighter. He does not idealize himself or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC], showing the tensions, fears, and doubts over everything from gender and race relations, to the basic theory of non-violence, as well as the intense brutalization they underwent in their quest for freedom. The story does not end with his departure from SNCC, but continues through his grassroots organizing efforts with GROW, to being abused by the NY State Police, and beyond. This is an amazing story, one that sheds so much new light on one of the most important eras of US history. The book is well written, highly readable, while reflecting the interesting southern sense of humor that seems so characteristic of Zellner. I would recommend this book to anyone, and would call it a must read for anyone with heightened interest in the CRM.
A timely addition to civil rights history November 19, 2008
Mr Zellner, an early SNCC member, has contributed a wonderful account of the civil rights movement as it entered its post 50's phase seeking to confront southern apartheid in the front-line states of Alabama. Mississippi and Louisiana. As one of the few white SNCC field secretaries from 1961, Mr Zellner endured beatings and even torture in a Louisiana prison alongside his sometimes better-known colleagues. More than a simple narrative, however, the book has relevance especially today for those too young to remember that until only a generation ago, some people were not free in the South and as Mr Zellner reminds us, calling an African American "Mr" could earn a severe beating from the police. Partly because of the sacrifice and commitment of SNCC members working on cooperation with other rights organizations, now, we can proudly say "Mr President".
Written as a memoir, "The Wrong Side of Murder Creek" is lively and informative and brings to life the excitement, hardships and dangers confronted by civil rights activists. It is a book which merits inclusion in US civil rights history as does Mr Zellner himself. His unique perspective as the son and grandson of devote Methodists and Ku Klux Klan members, Mr Zellner reminds us that standing up for what you believe in was and perhaps still is, dangerous but necessary.
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