A Slow, Calculated Lynching: The Story of Clyde Kennard

In the years following Brown v. Board of Education, countless Black citizens endured violent resistance and even death while fighting for their constitutional rights. One of those citizens, Clyde Kennard (1927-1963), a Korean War veteran and civil rights leader from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, attempted repeatedly to enroll at the all-white Mississippi Southern College--now the University of Southern Mississippi--in the late 1950s. In A Slow, Calculated Lynching: The Story of Clyde Kennard, Devery S. Anderson tells the story of a man who paid the ultimate price for trying to attend a white college during Jim Crow. Rather than facing conventional vigilantes, he stood opposed to the governor, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, and other high-ranking entities willing to stop at nothing to deny his dreams. In this comprehensive and extensively researched biography, Anderson examines the relentless subterfuge against Kennard, including the cruelly successful attempts to frame him--