Department of Communication and Media professor Dr. Roger Davis Gatchet recently published a book with Dr. Stephen A. King (St. Edward's University). Terror and Truth: Civil Rights Tourism and the Mississippi Movement (University Press of Mississippi) examines how Mississippi confronts its history of racial violence and injustice through civil rights tourism. Rather than chronicle the history of the Mississippi Movement, the book explores the museums, monuments, memorials, interpretive centers, homes, and historical markers marketed to heritage tourists in the state.
The ascendency of civil rights memorialization in Mississippi comes at a time when the nation is reckoning with its racial past, as evidenced by the Black Lives Matter movement, Mississippi’s adoption of a new state flag, the conviction of former members of the Ku Klux Klan, and the removal of Confederate monuments throughout the South. Terror and Truth directly engages this national conversation.