cover image CONFEDERACY OF SILENCE: A True Tale of the New Old South

CONFEDERACY OF SILENCE: A True Tale of the New Old South

Richard Rubin, . . Pocket, $26 (448pp) ISBN 978-0-671-03666-9

With no prospects for employment after his Ivy League graduation in 1988, Rubin, a 21-year-old Jewish New Yorker, accepted a job as a reporter in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. At the Greenwood Commonwealth Rubin covered sports and local news, wrote obituaries and features and photographed "local color." He also followed the short, happy career of Handy T. Campbell, an African-American high school quarterback from the projects—and this story forms the core of the book. Rubin believed Campbell's prowess on the gridiron would parallel Rubin's own promise in the newsroom. But after a year wrestling with his conscience for not decrying abhorrent attitudes and behavior he encountered in the bigoted bigwigs of Leflore County, Rubin fled. Six years later, he returned to Greenwood to understand how the star athlete (now an Ole Miss dropout) and an accomplice could find themselves indicted for the murder of a local UPS man rumored to be bisexual. Rubin focuses the latter part of his book on the sleazy maneuverings of college recruiters and coaches, the investigation into the victim's death, and the prosecution of the trial, which provides the book's frisson. The narrative benefits from Rubin's perceptive observations, but it is his emotional investment in the story that coheres the book's two halves: a memoir of a watershed year in his life and the sordid, convoluted tale of a gross miscarriage of justice. A grittier depiction of the New Old South than Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, to which it will undoubtedly be compared, Rubin's memoir exposes the racial polarity of the Delta in clear, effective prose. (July)