A remarkable novel of our struggle for civil rights
“Mention Freedom Summer these days and you’re likely to get a blank stare. Heath’s book should help remedy that. Tom Morton himself is an engaging, intelligent character, as are those with whom he spends this hot, often frightening time: ‘Feelgood,’ the young black man who is his boss; Esther, with whom Tom lusts after but who is in love with Feelgood; and Lenny, the friend whose sarcasm is a foil for their sometimes self-righteous assertions. The author clearly knows his subject and can evoke a scene, and one is drawn into the action and compelled by the events themselves.” — The Washington Post
“The Children Bob Moses Led lives and breathes. Heath’s book is important history, but it is also art.” — Toby Olson, winner of the PEN/Faulkner award for Seaview
“Engaging and suspenseful, this is contemporary fiction at its best . . . Readers too young to remember Freedom Summer will find Bob Moses an enigmatic, admirable hero.” — Dayton Daily News
“Bob Moses was the kind of leader we sadly miss today, one of quiet, yet enormous moral strength: a genuine inspiration to the sometimes confused idealism of the young volunteers in the midst of a violent and passionate struggle. Perhaps now, more than ever, we need to remember the summer of 1964. This novel is wonderfully instructive, it has a great deal of moral energy, and it tells an important story sensitively, carefully, thoughtfully.”— Robert Coles, author of Farewell to the South
“The large cast of characters gives voice to the complexity of the era’s issues, and Heath’s clear chronicle of this poignant moment in our nation’s recent past is often compelling.” — Publishers Weekly
“The Children Bob Moses Led is an important and timely book, one that is being published at an extremely pivotal period in our national history. The reader will experience the raw courage, the personal discipline, and the reliance on transcendent values, whether philosophical or religious, that were at the basis of this historic period of transformation in Mississippi.”— James Alan McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Elbow Room and Hue and Cry
“Heath has created a novel that holds true to the actual heroic events of Freedom Summer. The Children Bob Moses Led is an illuminating account of a period from our history that is too little known and too little understood.”— Claybourne Carson, editor of the papers of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and author of In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s
“The Children Bob Moses Led is an altogether compelling read and powerful evocation of the Summer Project. William Heath has told the story with great sensitivity, admiral regard for the historical record, and most of all consummate narrative skill.” — Doug McAdam, author of Freedom Summer
“William Heath’s fine novel casts a brilliant arc of light between the past and the present. Thanks to his skill as novelist and historian, we become the grown-up children Bob Moses led, better informed, better armed, and better able to march into the interracial America of today.” — Frank Bergon, author of Jesse’s Ghost
The Children
Bob Moses Led
William Heath
NEWSOUTH BOOKS
Montgomery
NewSouth Books
105 S. Court Street
Montgomery, AL 36104
Copyright © 2014 by William Heath. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by NewSouth Books, a division of NewSouth, Inc., Montgomery, Alabama.
ISBN: 978-1-60306-335-7
eBook ISBN: 978-1-60306-336-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014006541
This is a work of fiction. Although inspired by real persons and events, the characters, incidents, and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination and, except for appearances by some public figures, Bob Moses in particular, do not portray actual persons. Some historical events have been fictionalized in their details. Bob Moses and other historical figures are real people in a fictional work.
A study guide for The Children Bob Moses Led is available at www.newsouthbooks.com/bobmoses
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This book is dedicated to my parents
Louise Elizabeth Saywell and Ralph Mason Heath
and to my sister
Alice Heath Baker
Contents
McComb and Liberty, Mississippi: August–September 1961
Oxford, Ohio: June 21–27, 1964
Liberty and McComb, Mississippi: September–November 1961
Tallahatchie, Mississippi: June 29–July 24, 1964
Ruleville and Greenwood, Mississippi: January 1962–June 1963
Tom Morton: Voter Registration
McComb, Mississippi: July 24–August 20, 1964
Greenwood and Liberty, Mississippi: July 1963–May 1964
Atlantic City: August 22–27, 1964