Writing in oratorical language, Salomon begins with her subject\u2019s childhood in Mississippi, where \u201chate ran as deep as the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers,\u201d but the love she received from her aunt and grandmother \u201cflowed stronger than hate and river currents.\u201d Young Myrlie showed the strength of character necessary to confront white bullies and later to keep marching for both racial and personal justice when her first husband, Medgar Evers, was killed; ultimately she achieved the latter in court in 1994, when Medgar\u2019s killer was found guilty. Myrlie went on to become the first woman to chair the NAACP full time. Along with receiving many honors, she also finally realized a lifelong dream when, having had to put musical aspirations inspired by the example of biracial pianist Philippa Schuyler on hold for many years, she played Carnegie Hall in 2012. In realistic but lush, painterly freeze frames, Ladd depicts Myrlie from childhood on\u2014standing up to a cluster of cowed-looking white bullies, raising her fists in celebration of that guilty verdict, and looking on with determination throughout, including on celebratory occasions such as President Obama\u2019s second inauguration, when her voice \u201crang out like a symphony\u2014 \/ Strong. Soft. Soaring. \/ And her words echoed hope.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Writing in oratorical language, Salomon begins with her subject\u2019s childhood in Mississippi, where \u201chate ran as deep as the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers,\u201d but the love she received from her aunt and grandmother \u201cflowed stronger than hate and river currents.\u201d Young Myrlie showed the strength of character necessary to confront white bullies and later to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}