BRIDGING THE MISSISSIPPI A memoir of racial inequality and missed beads Sandi and Denny Baron both were delighted they landed their first job with ease. Joy turns to surprise when they drive across the nation to find themselves the only White teachers in an all-Black school in New Orleans. Naïve to the strong cultural divisions in the South, Sandi teaches her students to read and write, and they school her about the realities of their life. Then, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is killed by a White man. How will the staff and students at school respond to Sandi in the wake of their shock and grieving? To process the event, Sandi assigns her students to write about their feelings. Forty-five years later, the retired teacher reconnects with her former students and returns their eighth and ninth-grade essays written the day after Dr. King's assassination. Bridging The Mississippi is the compelling story of ordinary people building extraordinary bridges across racial tensions. Told from both sides, their story shows the best of the human spirit. "Bridging the Mississippi is a rich and valuable unveiling of how brave Americans crossed the racial divide, despite tensions and tightropes to bridge their cultural differences. With great storytelling savvy, Sandra Baker Baron shows us how to strengthen such diverse relationships, in order to reach vital realms of reconciliation and resolve. How important this book is for our times!"-Dr. Yolanda Powell, President & CEO, W.A.I.L. Worldwide Inc.

Bridging the Mississippi: Spans across the Father of Waters portrays in words and stunning photographs the manmade structures that cross the nation’s most important and, during the mid-nineteenth century, most daunting natural waterway. Philip Gould spent three years photographing Mississippi River bridges, from the Crescent City Connection in New Orleans to the span of boulders at the river’s headwaters in Lake Itasca, Minnesota. This book features seventy-five of the river’s more than 130 spans, progressing from south to north, in rural, small-town, and metropolitan settings. In every season and from numerous angles, Gould captured images of historical, architectural, and engineering significance as well as dramatic natural beauty. In addition, his photos reflect the many perspectives of people whose lives intersect with the bridges, including riverboat captains, construction workers, pedestrians, drivers, cyclists, wedding parties, recreational boaters and fishers, business owners, and train engineers. Margot Hasha offers a fascinating overview of bridge construction on the Mississippi, starting with the waterway’s geology and the earliest-known settlement along the banks of Misi-ziibi, what Native Americans called the “father of waters.” She discusses the impact of steel production on the expansion of railroad bridges, hazards encountered by river pilots today, the preservation of vintage structures, and the latest bridge designs. Hasha and Gould profile select crossings in eleven cities and towns, explaining each one’s unique story and importance to its riverside community. Architectural and engineering feats; focal points for urban renewal; essential links in the nation’s transportation and commerce; aesthetic frames for parks, riverwalks, and levee trails—the Mississippi River’s bridges come into full focus in this visual tribute.

Horace King (1807-1885) built covered bridges over every large river in Georgia, Alabama, and eastern Mississippi. That King, who began life as a slave in Cheraw, South Carolina, received no formal training makes his story all the more remarkable. This is the first major biography of the gifted architect and engineer who used his skills to transcend the limits of slavery and segregation and become a successful entrepreneur and builder. John S. Lupold and Thomas L. French Jr. add considerably to our knowledge of a man whose accomplishments demand wider recognition. As a slave and then as a freedman, King built bridges, courthouses, warehouses, factories, and houses in the three-state area. The authors separate legend from facts as they carefully document King’s life in the Chattahoochee Valley on the Georgia-Alabama border. We learn about King’s freedom from slavery in 1846, his reluctant support of the Confederacy, and his two terms in Alabama’s Reconstruction legislature. In addition, the biography reveals King’s relationship with his fellow (white) contractors and investors, especially John Godwin, his master and business partner, and Robert Jemison Jr., the Alabama entrepreneur and legislator who helped secure King’s freedom. The story does not end with Horace, however, because he passed his skills on to his three sons, who also became prominent builders and businessmen. In King’s world few other blacks had his opportunities to excel. King seized on his chances and became the most celebrated bridge builder in the Deep South. The reader comes away from King’s story with respect for the man; insight into the problems of financing, building, and maintaining covered bridges; and a new sense of how essential bridges were to the southern market economy.

A study of how material goods and antebellum consumption defined whiteness