From my journal, August 16

Listened to Halberstam’s “The Fifties” until 4 p.m., when I switched to the news shows. Halberstam is now focusing on civil rights violence, particularly in that old kicking-boy Mississippi. So far, he has talked about the murder of Emmett Till and has mentioned William Bradford Huie, who wrote a magazine article about the Till murder.

In the summer of 1960, when I went off to USM to try to find a job and work my way through college, my friend and Jackson CHS classmate Ronnie had gotten a job at the Hattiesburg (Miss.) American. We were staying with Ronnie’s mother, “Cricket.” Ronnie and I did research work and typed notes for William Bradford Huie, who was there doing research for a Cavalier magazine article about the racial murder of Mack Charles Parker. Huie wrote “The Execution of Private Slovik” (1954), “The Americanization of Emily” (1959), “The Hero of Iwo Jima” about American Indian Ira Hayes (1962) and many other books and articles.

Interestingly, we didn’t get the job through the newspaper. Cricket was a good waitress at a restaurant on Broadway Street and told Huie we were available and qualified to help him with his research. Nothing like a good cup of coffee to influence a writer!

I did get a parttime job with a lawyer, but Cricket said he was a “skirt-chaser” and advised against it. Went back to Jackson, Miss., got a job and finally entered USM in 1978! Ronnie, by the way, named her only child, a girl, Cricket.

***

Later. Three events of the 50s shaped American culture to come, Halberstam writes: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas; the invention of the mechanical cotton picker and the migration of blacks to the north; and Elvis Presley.

Halberstam has now moved on to Elvis and James Dean, “the eternal rebel,” and those wonderful GM cars of the 50s.

Interesting to be revisiting my youth on the anniversary of Elvis’ death. What fate to be born at just the right time to be a teenager in the 50s!