Witness in Philadelphia

by Florence Mars

Book Overview

On June 21, 1964, three young civil rights workers--James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner--were murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Florence Mars, a native of Philadelphia, recounts... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807102652
• ISBN13: 9780807102657
• Release Date: January 1977
• Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Great Reading!

I actually bought this book for a friend whose cousin is the author, but asked him if he minded if I kept it long enough to read it. Am I glad I did! The Civil Rights movement pretty much passed me by because of where I lived at the time, but even after nearly 30 years in the South I'm appalled at how much I don't know. This book is an up-close, in-depth personal account of a very bad time in our history. It has to do with change that was needed but was unfortunately facilitated by a government determined to legislate morality, which created a backlash of rabble-rousers hell-bent on not being pushed into something they could have just as easily been led into. This is a book that needs to be digested, not just read, in order to appreciate the undercurrents and things left unsaid. It very accurately captures the people and the time and place, but it also left me--the reader--with many questions about the way the entire thing was handled from start to finish.

Excellent and Informative

This book is definitely a page turner. The author goes into amazing detail as a real live eyewitness. I was especially enthralled with this particular piece of civil rights history because my dad, who was african american, was born and raised in this town. I highly recommend reading this book to anyone interested in researching the civil rights struggle, particularly Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney.