Mississippi Chariot

by Harriette Gillem Robinet

In Mississippi in 1936, twelve-year-old Shortning Bread Jackson tries to help his falsely convicted father while dealing with the troubled racial climate in his town. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0689319606
• ISBN13: 9780689319600
• Release Date: November 1994
• Publisher: Atheneum Books
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.7" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 9 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 4 to 7

Customer Reviews

Fantastic Amazing

There was this boy named Shortning. His dad got taken away to a gang known as the Mississippi Chain Gang. Ever since then, Shortnings family has been torn apart. So Shortning decides to make a plan. His plan was to make a rumor. Mississippi people were dumb and believed anything that was thrown at them. Shortning meets one of his best friends in a weirs way. Shortning found Hawk in a pond drowning and jumped in and pulled Hawk out. Hawk was a white boy and refused to shake Shortning's hand. Hawk ended up helping Shortning with his plan. I liked this book, because it taught me a lot about historical races and religions. I love those kinds of books when blacks and whites or any different kinds of religions come together. I like when little kids are heroes like Shortning. I also learned about what they wore and where they worked and how they worked for a living. It also taught me never to give up.

This Book Should Have Won a 1998 Newbery Honor!

Wow--this is a gripping tale about poverty, racial prejudice and social injustice rampant in the rural South during the Depression. In 20 short chapters author Robinet depicts the inherited evils of the era, wherein sharecropping was merely a legitimized form of Slavery. Ethical question: are we justified to use any means to ensure our physical and economic survival? Why play fair and abide by humanitarian rules, when the enemy is brutally corrupt and ruthlessly embittered? How far must familial honor dictate the suffering of its members? For Shortening Bread Jackson's 12th birthday, he wants to give his large family the gift they most desire: his daddy's freedom from the harsh chain gang, for a crime he did not commit. But there was no justice to be had for sharecropping Blacks who bucked the system in a mangy widespot in the road called Sleepy Corners. This psychological flyspeck on a shabby map was home to a few rich folks who wielded the power to keep a disenfranchised race enslaved into the 20th century. Running scared and desperate to make an example of those who protested inhumane treatment--those who defied the ancient social system--the sherrif and landowners unite to retain their petty dictatorship. But young Shortening Bread is clever beyond his years and all his older brothers combined. He has a dream and knows it is up to him to realize it for them all. He uses his wits and knowledge of human nature to start a rumor about an FBI agent coming to release his daddy from the chain gang. Can a mere kid defy social convention and actually deliver a white man intent on justice, who will free Rufus Jackson at high noon on Wednesday? Sherrif Clark doesn't take kindly to being made a fool of in his own domain, or being maniuplated by Blacks. If this scheme can be pulled off, will their lives be worth anything afterwards? Can a white boy befriend a black boy, defying generations of strict protocol, in an area policed by the Klan? They may not play together or even shake hands, not say thank you for helping save a life. This riveting tale of interracial cooperation to achieve an underground form of justice will hold the interest of grades 4-10. But all conscientious adults should read this book and never forget our dark past of shame, so that such atrocities do not occur again. Black History revived!