Freedom Summer story resonates

from the Dayton Daily News, October 15, 1995

While some novels based on historical events use history as cheap background scenery or read like textbooks with dialogue, William Heath's novel rises above such pitfalls and vividly recreates Freedom Summer 1964--one of America's most crucial domestic episodes.

After attending an orientation session in Oxford, Ohio, idealistic college students from across the country headed south to Mississippi to help Bob Moses register black voters. The Children Bob Moses Led reminds us how far the country has come in the civil rights struggle, and how much work remains.

Reminiscent of All the King's Men in its ambition and political scope, the novel is narrated by Bob Moses, the charismatic leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Tom Morton, a white college student who desires to become "his own contemporary" by contributing to social change. Thoughtful and restrained, Moses is a brilliant political organizer with gentle courage and great moral integrity.

Bob Moses is real, and the novel reconstructs his powerful presence and passionate leadership that inspired people such as Morton to put their lives on the line. Heath is adept at making a real-life (and still living) Moses a credible first person narrator.

Morton and other volunteers travel to the Delta, where they find a frightening and unfamiliar Southern landscape where whites maintain superiority with guns and scare tactics. Morton and his friends go to the homes of blacks to persuade them to register to vote. The mission of the Mississippi Summer Project was to help blacks see that gaining the power of the vote would empower them to change discriminatory laws. The volunteers soon learn how challenging it will be to find people brave enough to stand up against the threat of violence.

Chilling death threats and mob violence instill terror in both black and white volunteers. Despite the dangers, Tom Morton moves in with a black family and begins to teach black children in a Freedom School. Morton's students are so used to being put down by whites that they are amazed at his egalitarian ideals.

Rural Mississippi is a lonely, frightening place for Morton, and the temptation to take the next bus out of town grows stronger each day as he faces intimidation and beatings. Morton begins to question his role in the project as he measures himself againt the legendary Bob Moses. Amid the chaotic scene of a country divided by race, he wrestles with puzzling questions as he comes to grips with his fear.

Heath's novel is populated by both real (Moses) and fictitious (Morton) characters, but the events are historically accurate. Like Slaughterhouse-Five, the novel views the past with a critical eye, blending real events and public figures with representative characters who live through the most difficult of times.

The Children Bob Moses Led is not only the first major novel to deal with the complex politics of Freedom Summer and the dissolution of the civil rights coalition, it is also one of the few novels on any subject that actually shows how people voted and what they stood for.

Engaging and suspenseful, this is contemporary fiction at its best, and is sure to find its way into college courses on the '60s and the civil rights movement. Readers too young to remember Bob Moses and his work will find Bob Moses an enigmatic, admirable hero. Those who do remember his work will miss him.

http://geocities.datacellar.net/Athens/Acropolis/4152/dayton.html

The Children Bob Moses Led is a fascinating story and one that needed to be told. The book is a fine achievement that vividly brings to life the issues and personalities of the time.

Robert Stone, author of Dog Soldiers, Outerbridge Reach, Damascus Gate, Bear and His Daughter, A Hall of Mirrors, A Flag for Sunrise