Taking the Fight South

In this “entertaining and informative” memoir, a Jewish civil rights activist recounts living in Mississippi and fighting for racial equity (Howard Winant, co-author of Racial Formation in the United States).

In Taking the Fight South, distinguished historian and civil rights activist Howard Ball focuses on six years, from 1976 to 1982, when he and his Jewish family moved from New York City to Starkville, Mississippi, where he received a tenured position in the political science department at Mississippi State University. For Ball, his wife, Carol, and their three young daughters, the move represented a leap of faith, ultimately illustrating their deep commitment toward racial justice.

With breathtaking historical authority, Ball narrates the experience of his family as Jewish outsiders in Mississippi, an unfamiliar and dangerous landscape contending with the aftermath of the civil rights struggle. Signs and natives greeted them with a humiliating and frightening message: “No Jews, Negroes, etc., or dogs welcome.” From refereeing football games, coaching soccer, and helping young black girls integrate the segregated Girl Scout troops in Starkville, to life-threatening calls from the KKK in the middle of the night, from his work for the ACLU to his arguments in the press and before a congressional committee for the extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Ball takes the reader to a precarious time and place in the history of the South. 

“I read this book personally, internalizing it deeply to ask if I would have had similar courage.” ―Mark Curnutte, author of Across the Color Line

“Howard Ball's memoir...reminds us of the fragility of democracy and of the urgency of resisting ongoing efforts to subvert it.”  —Cheryl Lester, co-author of Social Work Practice With a Difference