Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction |  | Author: Melissa Fay Greene
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
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Rating:  29 reviews
Media: Paperback
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.3 x 1.1
ISBN: 0306815176
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.09758737
EAN: 9780306815171
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Amazon.com Review
Despite what it said in the New York Times or the Congressional Record, not everybody in America got the word right away about the civil rights movement. Thus it was that well into the 1970s, McIntosh County in backwoods Georgia remained a place where the black majority still had never elected one of their own to any county office, where black kids were bused away from the white school, and where the white county sheriff had his hand in every racket there was. Praying for Sheetrock is the saga of how, thanks to the leadership of a black shop-steward-turned-county-commissioner named Thurnell Alston, together with the aid of a cadre of idealistic Legal Services lawyers (Melissa Greene was one of their paralegals) this situation began to change. The story, written as grippingly as a novel, is charged with twists that only nonfiction can deliver; for example, Alston, for all the brave good he did, ultimately got caught in a federal sting and went to jail while the corrupt sheriff walked. This is, writes Greene, a story of "large and important things happening in a very little place."
Product Description
Finalist for the 1991 National Book Award and a New York Times Notable book, Praying for Sheetrock is the story of McIntosh County, a small, isolated, and lovely place on the flowery coast of Georgia--and a county where, in the 1970s, the white sheriff still wielded all the power, controlling everything and everybody. Somehow the sweeping changes of the civil rights movement managed to bypass McIntosh entirely. It took one uneducated, unemployed black man, Thurnell Alston, to challenge the sheriff and his courthouse gang--and to change the way of life in this community forever. "An inspiring and absorbing account of the struggle for human dignity and racial equality" (Coretta Scott King)
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 29
 If you want to understand the South, read this. April 10, 2005
B. Studdard (still there)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
As a native Southerner, I can say that Melissa Faye Greene is spot-on in creating her characters. Her descriptions of people, places, scenes, sounds, and smells bring everything to life. I find myself saying again and again, "I've experienced that; I know that person." I gave this book to my teen-ager so she would understand why racial politics are what they are in the South; she's now re-reading it -- on her own -- for the third time. Parts of this story will make you laugh out loud; others will make you angry; throughout, there is the human struggle for dignity. If you want to understand the South of the current generation and the one before it, I recommend this book highly.
A wonderful history of a little battle for civil rights. February 4, 1997
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
What a wonderful work! Melissa Faye Greene has brought together a passion for scholarship and a mellifluous writing style. Darien, Georgia is hardly the place to begin when one studies the civil rights movement in America -- but Melissa Faye Greene shows us the impact of this revolution in rural America, a story too often neglected in favor of stories of urban desegregation. Beautifully written, Ms. Greene elucidates the struggles of blacks and whites to come to terms with a changing social reality, and cast off decades of de facto dictatorial rule by a white aristocracy. In the process, both white and black come to see that what unites them is greater than what divides them, even though what unites them is not always to their liking
An evocative oral history and a provocative work of journalism February 21, 2006
D. Cloyce Smith (Brooklyn, NY)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
There are a number of astonishing things about this provocative and evocative history of a remote coastal region of Georgia. Greene's chronicle is not simply an account of the institutional and covert racism that plagued one Southern county. Nor is it merely a biography of an unlikely black leader who led a momentous, peaceful rebellion against the white hierarchy before succumbing (at best) to his own credulity or (at worst) to the very corruption he criticized. Instead, "Praying for Sheetrock" is a composite oral history of a complex, deceptively quiet community during the 1970s and 1980s, where the social norms seemed old-fashioned, even quaint, and where even justifiably disgruntled citizens, both white and black, are restrained equally by an ill-defined sense of fear and by a desire to get along with their neighbors.
At the time of the writing, McIntosh County had been dominated by a corrupt yet efficient, nepotistic yet clever "Old Boy" network, but it was also populated by an impoverished black community that, on the surface, seemed to have been on good terms with the local white authorities all through the chaos of the civil rights struggle. For many years, state and federal authorities suspected that county officials, led by Sheriff Tom Poppell, had been deeply implicated in jury tampering, tax evasion, bribery, illegal gambling, drug-running, prostitution, and even murder. Folks joked that Poppell "was the only sheriff in America who owned four houses, one with an airfield, and all on twelve thousand dollars a year." Yet every attempt by higher authorities (who regularly indicated on their reports that Poppell was to be considered "armed and dangerous") failed to nab the suspects. The victims of their never-indicted yet well-documented activities included tourists on the way through the county to family vacations in Florida as well as the local poor.
The story of how this county eventually entered the late 20th century makes fascinating reading, and Greene's prose is an odd yet refreshing blend of journalism and lyricism. (It was included among the top 100 works of 20th-century American journalism by the New York University School of Journalism.) The reader is repeatedly stunned by her ability to persuade such a wide spectrum of local citizens--rich and poor, white and black, conservative and liberal--to talk at such length and with such honesty. Only at the very end of the book, in the acknowledgments, does it become clear that the author was far from a Janie-come-lately to the scene: she worked at Georgia Legal Services (which provided advice on civil liberties matters for the black community), was a witness to most of the events, and married one of the lawyers featured in the book. Rather than prejudicing her account, her experiences give the events an insider's perspective and make her relative objectivity all the more admirable. In fact, it's safe to say that only Greene could have written this book. And, much like "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" (itself set only a few miles to the north), her book manages to look underneath the scandal and the poverty and to reveal much to admire in the gentle camaraderie of these easygoing neighbors.
Above all, "Praying for Sheetrock" reminds us of the courageous heroes who look "upon law, upon the Constitution, as a series of fundamental truths about basic human rights." Those heroes include black community members, young and old, willing to risk everything for those rights; the lawyers who represented and advised them for next to nothing; and the small yet powerful number of local whites who believed that enough was enough. It's an inspiring tale that reminds us that the civil rights struggle is far from over.
Excellent and Accurate Portrayal February 2, 2007
Casual Reader (Missouri)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Having been born and raised in a small community in south Georgia, I have seen first-hand much of what was described in this book. I found this work to be incredibly interesting and moving. Have attitudes evolved and changed for the better in this area? Yes, fortunately. Are there still traces of this? Yes, unfortunately. But with excellent works such as this, we can only hope that the sad attitudes and discrimination that is so accurately described in Ms. Greene's work will become a part of our distant past.
Wonderful read!! October 10, 2002
Nicole Chenault (Sherwood, AR United States)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Once I picked this book up, I could not put it down. The way Greene chose to set up this book and play out the story is excellent. She laid out the characters and the scene in such a way to allow the reader to draw their own conclusions to the facts, giving equal voice to all parties. Though the heroes and villians are obvious, she doesn't portray them in a straight forward way. It opens with a complete and thorough description of everything surrounding the actual story, which gives the reader the feeling that they are there - a part of it - before all is said and done. The research she did on the subject to offer a tale told with all sides is commendable. Equally Fascinating and Intriguing!!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 29
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