History Study Group (HSG)

"Rising Tide" is much more than the story of the great Mississippi flood of 1927, which is fascinating in itself.  It covers the engineering debates of the 1850's and how decisions made then resulted in the Katrina disaster in New Orleans.  As usual,  power politics and the arrogance and egos of individuals were contributing factors.

However, the flood was only part of the story.  John M. Barry covers the politics of racism in the south and how one powerful family tried to improve the standard of living of blacks in the Mississippi Delta.

Wikipedia's account of the flood.
   
Patsy R. Brumfield has a southerner's take on the book.  I agree with her in that the book is as much about the Mississippi delta and its history.

"The Year of Birmingham," 1963, was a cataclysmic turning point in America’s long civil rights struggle. Child demonstrators faced down police dogs and fire hoses in huge nonviolent marches against segregation. Ku Klux Klansmen retaliated by bombing the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young black girls. Diane McWhorter, daughter of a prominent Birmingham family, weaves together police and FBI records, archival documents, interviews with black activists and Klansmen, and personal memories into an extraordinary narrative of the personalities and events that brought about America’s second emancipation.

In a new afterword—reporting last encounters with hero Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and describing the current drastic anti-immigration laws in Alabama—the author demonstrates that Alabama remains a civil rights crucible.

Diane McWhorter is a New Your City writer who is a native of Birmingham, Alabama.  She was shocked during the 1976 bi-centennial when she looked up Birmingham in a street kiosk that celebrated American cites and was confronted with the church bombing deaths of the four girls.  She was the same age of the girls and was not aware of the magnitude of the racial unrest in Birmingham.  

During Diane's extensive research of the events, she learned that several family members, including her father, were active segregationists.

"Carry Me Home" makes you feel as if you were there during those terrible events.