University of Arkansas Press Publishes New Edition of Willie Morris Classic

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The University of Arkansas Press has published a new edition of Yazoo: Integration in a Deep-Southern Town, by Willie Morris. The book, published in 1971, contains a new foreword by historian Jennifer Jensen Wallach and a new afterword on Morris’s writing life by his widow, JoAnne Prichard Morris.

In 1970 Brown v. Board of Education was 16 years old, and 15 years had passed since the Brown II mandate that schools integrate “with all deliberate speed.” Still, after all that time, it was necessary for the Supreme Court to order 30 Mississippi school districts — whose speed had been anything but deliberate — to integrate immediately. One of these districts included Yazoo City, the hometown of writer Willie Morris. Morris was living and writing on “safe, sane Manhattan Island,” at the time but felt compelled to return home and write about this pivotal moment. However, he was reluctant to return to Yazoo unless he could serve as “cultural ambassador” between the flawed Mississippi that he loved and the wider world. The result of his mission, Yazoo, is a rich account of a community’s attempt to come to terms with the realities of seismic social change. Steven Lawson, author of Civil Rights Crossroads, said of the book, “The republication of Yazoo offers a powerful, cautionary tale for those who insist the nation has transcended its historic racial divide. In the tradition of other notable southern transplants — James Weldon Johnson, Richard Wright, Taylor Branch, and C. Vann Woodward — Morris writes perceptively about the tortured interaction between white supremacy and black self-preservation. Yazoo masterfully combines subjective reflection with objective reporting.”

Roy Reed, retired New York Times civil rights reporter and author of the forthcoming University of Arkansas Press title Wandering with the Times, said, “Those who have never read Yazoo will benefit from this new edition for two special reasons: Jennifer Jensen Wallach’s introduction, which provides useful historical perspective, and an afterword by JoAnne Prichard Morris, the author’s widow, which gives us a personal portrait of the man during his last years back home in Mississippi. The book itself is a classic portrayal of the South’s barbarism flailing against its enduring humanity.”

Willie Morris (1934–1999) was the editor in chief of Harper’s and the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including North Toward Home and My Dog Skip. Jennifer Jensen Wallach is the author of Closer to the Truth Than Any Fact: Memoir, Memory, and Jim Crow, a study of how memoirs can best be utilized as historical source material. She is also editor of Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas. JoAnne Prichard Morris was long-time executive editor of the University Press of Mississippi and coauthor of Barefootin’: Life Lessons From the Road to Freedom. She was married to Willie Morris from 1990 to 1999.

Founded in 1980, the University of Arkansas Press is the book publishing division of the University of Arkansas. It publishes approximately 20 titles a year. The University of Arkansas Press is charged by the trustees of the university with the publication of books in service to the academic community and for the enrichment of the broader culture.