A Slow, Calculated Lynching: The Story of Clyde Kennard by Devery S. Anderson (review)

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• A Slow, Calculated Lynching: The Story of Clyde Kennard by Devery S. Anderson
• Scout Johnson

A Slow, Calculated Lynching: The Story of Clyde Kennard. By Devery S. Anderson. Foreword by James Meredith. Race, Rhetoric, and Media. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2023. Pp. xviii, 299. $35.00, ISBN 978-1-4968-4404-0.)

If it is true that history is written by the victors, it is almost equally true that history is written of the victors. Rarely do we read of the ones who came before the winners, those who, despite their striving, fell short. James Meredith, who desegregated the University of Mississippi, is well known, as are Ruby Bridges and Autherine Lucy. And though perhaps not as many can name them individually, the Little Rock Nine are a part of our collective consciousness. They were successful in integrating their specific schools, but others, who tried valiantly but failed, have been left behind. In A Slow, Calculated Lynching: The Story of Clyde Kennard, Devery S. Anderson seeks to redress that oversight by recounting the story of Clyde Kennard (1927–1963), who was the first African American to attempt integrating Mississippi Southern College (MSC, now the University of Southern Mississippi). Kennard was unsuccessful in his multiple tries, and the state of Mississippi turned its full weight to making sure that he remained unsuccessful, in the process carrying out the “slow, calculated lynching” of the title. Anderson argues that Kennard’s death from cancer was no less deliberate or preventable than those of other civil rights martyrs who died at the end of a rope or gun, or in a fiery conflagration.

After Kennard’s attempt to enroll in MSC, he was arrested and convicted, first on false “reckless driving and illegal possession of liquor” charges, then robbery charges, again false (p. 61). While it is all but impossible to prove without a specific confession, Anderson’s contention that the intentional refusal by state actors of follow-up visits after Kennard’s cancer treatment led directly to his death is convincing. This sort of state action is state violence, though perhaps gentler than a truncheon, firehose, or canine assault. Violence can also be passive, uncaring inaction, not only active and aggressive. [End Page 458] An impressive variety of sources—court, government, military, university, and private archival papers, along with oral histories and interviews, documentaries, and contemporaneous press coverage—are all woven together to tell a heartbreaking yet ultimately powerful tale of one man’s resistance not only to segregation, but also to the hatred and bitterness endemic to white supremacy.

For Anderson, Kennard stands for those who were beaten down before they could see the mountaintop, following a newer school of civil rights histories being written from the bottom up, rather than as the traditional top-down, leader-driven histories. Additionally, much like the work of Danielle L. McGuire, Anderson’s work highlights a small spark that led to a greater movement and makes connections from one man’s stand in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to the larger civil rights movement. Kennard was also friends with Medgar Evers and Vernon Dahmer Sr., two civil rights figures who were killed by the short, sharp shock of white supremacist violence, and who are both more well known outside southern Mississippi today in part because of the way their lives were cut short.

The book is a straightforward chronology of Kennard’s life and afterlife, with short explanations of Reconstruction and Jim Crow to provide context. Anderson also describes the efforts put into having Kennard’s conviction overturned posthumously. Additionally, he details the work that supporters put into honoring Kennard at the university that rejected him, leading to his name on a building and an honorary doctorate. The book opens with the story of the 2013 unveiling of a portrait of Kennard painted as part of Robert Shetterly’s Americans Who Tell the Truth series—for many, their introduction to the story of Kennard. In his remarks, Shetterly asked, “Why don’t we know these stories? Why aren’t we taught these people? They would empower us” (p. xvii). For many, the last part of his statement answers the first.

Scout Johnson University of Houston...