ABSTRACT
Sons is excellent background reading on racial prejudice in the South and the forces of resistance against integration. The first two sections of the book, in which Hendrickson introduces the seven sheriffs and tells the tale of integration at Ole Miss, contain excellent material. The last section, in which the sins of the fathers are visited on the children, is too long and too far removed from the original story. The reader starts to feel sympathy for the children and grandchildren, who are being subjected to this intense scrutiny simply because they are related to sheriffs pictured in Life magazine. Perhaps most sympathetic is James Meredith's introverted son, Joe, who just wants to be left alone, having suffered as the son of a prominent but eccentric civil rights hero. Joe recently received his PhD in finance from Ole Miss but he wants to remain anonymous. Of his father he says: "So you think of my father forty years ago at this school. First day of class, every student in his class wants to leave the classroom. Every day you go into the cafeteria at lunch, and you hear the taunting ... What I mean is, sometimes I think I know what my father felt" (283). The reader is left wondering whether much has changed over the last forty years. In the words of T. S. Eliot: "We had the experience but missed the meaning" (296).
