Thanks for sharing your experience and your perspective on Southern Literature.

I was a kid in Jackson Mississippi in the 1950s- early '60s.

My teen and college years were in Loiusiana.

I wrote and published a novel about all of it; published the story in 2017.

The early chapters of King of Soul take place in Mississippi, fictionizing, while historicizing, a few significant events in Jackson during those years, most notably the murder of Medgar Evers in 1963.

Those were dark days in America, especially in the South.

We have a long way in solving racial disparities since those murderous days!

And yet, there is still much to do to preserve and improve Justice in America.

The murder of George Floyd set a new camera angle on racial issues that still needed to be dealt with.

The times they have been a-changin'. In wwweb-intense fishbowl 2023 existence, Joy Reid projects as much influence nowadays as Medgar, Martin and the dead Birmingham dead girls did back in those nefarious days.

We have come a long way. The South has been a melting pot of previously frozen-in-time American conflicts.

Literature is as important now as it ever was, even in our wwwebified Age. Keep up the good work. Kids need to learn how to read--and to comprehend the real world (even if it is fictionalized.) Reading history and literature is the best antidote against dumbing-down, tik-tokking the months and years in which might descend into another DarkAges, even though our screens are lit up almost 24-hours-a-day.

Keep the Lit up to keep our minds lit up.