I just finished SPIES OF MISSISSIPPI by Rick Bowers and was most intrigued by the story of Clyde Kennard, a man I had never heard of. Kennard, a Korean War vet and Bronze Star winner, applied to Mississippi Southern in 1956. No African Americans attended college there but he had come home from Chicago (where he was going to college pursuing a political science degree) after his father died and his mother was in danger of losing their chicken farm. He wanted to continue his college education and Mississippi Southern was the closest school. His application was denied more than once and he was ultimately framed for possession and transport of liquor. His college dreams completely ended when a teenager arrested for stealing five bags of chicken feed confessed under pressure that Kennard had put him up to it. The teenager was given a suspended sentence and Kennard was sent to the Parchman prison farm (max security) for seven years of hard labor. As the NAACP worked to free him he became dreadfully ill in prison and was diagnosed with cancer. The governor turned down requests to free him until nearly the end, letting Kennard out only long enough to enjoy a few months with his family until he died.

I've never even seen a footnote about Clyde Kennard in a textbook.

With a story like this one - plus James Meredith and Medgar Evers and freedom riders and James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman's infamous murders, you would think that SPIES, about the taxpaper funded efforts to subvert the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, would make for gripping reading. The fact that not only was state government actively involved in spying on its own people to fight federal law, but that it used taxpayer funds and that blacks and whites were involved in the effort, hardly seems believable. And yet for all this amazing information about payoffs and private investigators and even hand drawn maps showing where the dead are buried - SPIES OF MISSISSIPPI is a rather dull book.

I could hardly believe it.

It is clear the author was mandated to stay within a certain page count because he zips from one person to another in only a few pages, barely giving readers a chance to get to know about someone before dragging the narrative forward to someone else. Evers warrants only a few pages which is stunning enough but when you consider that Kennard merits an entire book alone you have to wonder who else should be in here but was left out. There's just too much information and not enough page count - at some point the author & publisher should have realized that something had to give.

My other main complaint is the lack of photographs. For a National Geographic title this was really unexpected. There is a four page center insert of photos and then an appendix with several documents reproduced and that's it. I don't understand this at all. SPIES deserves the full on NG treatment - it should be oversized (at the very least comparable to CLAUDETTE COLVIN or ALMOST ASTRONAUTS squared design) and there should be a ton of photos and illustrations. This is recent history - there is no problem getting excellent photos from the period and there should be a lot more ephemera. I felt slighted by the design here and I feel it slights the subject matter as well. That is a big disappointment.

Longtime readers will know that I judge history books on a hard scale - especially those on the Holocaust and Civil Rights Movement. If you can't teach me something new (or shine new light on a familiar subject) then I'm unimpressed. SPIES OF MISSISSIPPI hits it out of the ballpark on that score - I've never read a detailed account on the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and thus in many ways I am the best possible reader for this book. But even though it is easy to recommend because it is the only thing out there for teens (that I know of) on this subject, I'm still disappointed. National Geographic has taught me to expect much more from their titles and I wish I knew why they thought this one was good enough as it is right now.

[Post pic from the NYT: "Clyde Kennard with his sister, Sara Tarpley, at O'Hare Airport in Chicago after his 1963 release from a Mississippi prison. He died that year."]