Three Mississippi: A Mississippian Burning with a Passion for Reconciliation

In the wake of a city council decision to rename three parks that honored the Confederate side of the Civil War, Memphis Mayor A. C. Wharton made an interesting statement. "My personal philosophy is that we always need more history" he said. "You don't correct history by taking stuff out of it; you correct it by putting more into it" Native Mississippian Hal Kitchings "puts more into it" in Three Mississippi, a deeply honest look at racial prejudice in the Deep South of the 1960s from a man who witnessed it firsthand. Kitchings, a third-generation pastor, offers a unique perspective on racial segregation, prejudice, equality, and integration as he confronts not only Mississippi's sins, but his own in an effort to add to the historical narrative. Half memoir and half commentary, Three Mississippi is divided into three sections and stretches from the height of integration in the 1960s to Kitchings's current efforts to bridge the gap between black and white. He compares the reconciliation of the South with its racial history to a sinner reconciling with God through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. In so doing, he definitively shows how true reconciliation is achievable, regardless of skin color or socio-economic background. Using a witty, conversational style, Kitchings tackles Mississippi's heated past head on in a journey you won't forget.