Jo Ivester - The Outskirts of Hope: A Memoir of the 1960s Deep South

The Outskirts of Hope is a courageous confession of a daughter about her mother and herself that lays bare the front line of the American civil rights struggle of the 1960s. While this was certainly a period of great figures doing dramatic acts, this book instead brings the reader into the engine room, where the underlying support base was proving its mettle. This is the real story of how revolutions succeed.

Steve Adler, Mayor of Austin, Texas

This is a fearless mother-and-daughter memoir about a white familys move from Boston to a small black town in the Mississippi Delta to help launch the nations first community health center providing health care to the poor and needy. The leaders of the civil rights struggleblack and white, male and femaleare famous, but we hear much less about the ordinary people in the families that came with them. But here are the voices of two extraordinary women. Their effort helped change the nation. Aura and Jos journey across the chasms of race and poverty also profoundly changed their lives. It may well do the same for readers of their story.

H. Jack Geiger, MD, founding director of the Delta Health Center and Arthur Logan Professor Emeritus, City University of New York Medical School

In the sixties, a lot of people talked the talk about civil rights. The Kruger family lived the life. This sensitive but no-holds-barred account of their life in Mound Bayou, Mississippi is one of the most gripping real-life stories of confronting and dealing with racism ever written. Warning: Once you start reading The Outskirts of Hope, you wont be able to stop.

Forrest Preece, columnist, West Austin News

This is a fascinating tale of a family who took their three youngest children to an essentially all-black community in the Mississippi Delta, where the father opened a medical clinic and the mother taught in an all-black school. The kids survived, albeit not without drama.

Dave Richards, lawyer, US Civil Rights Commissioner in the 1960s

An unflinching memoir of the hopes, triumphs, and disappointments of a white family that moves to a black community in one of the most segregated areas of the American South in the late 1960s. This engaging book offers a rare and moving narrative of the power of seemingly modest personal activities in delivering the durable social changes promised by laws and policy.

Bob Flanagan, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University

Ivesters Jewish-Bostonian family took a chance on the importance of being human at a time when life was minimized based on the color of a persons skin. Ivester captures the essence of the resulting journey through the dual eyes of a child and her mother as they learn the impact of just saying yes.

Gigi Edwards Bryant, Trustee, Austin Community College District

THE

OUTSKIRTS

of

HOPE

Copyright 2015 by Jo Ivester

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Harlem (2) from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad with David Roessel, Associate Editor, copyright 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

By permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated. Copyright as given by Random House.

The Cider House Rules by John Irving. Copyright (c) 1985 by Garp Enterprises, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Copyright 1970, 1992 by Betty Shabazz and Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

All photos were taken from the Kruger Family Photo Album unless otherwise noted.

Published 2015

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-63152-964-1

eISBN: 978-1-63152-965-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014953583

Book design by Stacey Aaronson

For information, address:

She Writes Press

1563 Solano Ave #546

Berkeley, CA 94707

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

For teachers everywhere

Many Americans live on the outskirts of hope, some because of their poverty and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON, ANNOUNCING THE WAR ON POVERTY, JANUARY 8, 1964

ONE
THE OUTSKIRTS of HOPE

TWO
MOUND BAYOU

THREE
LIVING with DON QUIXOTE

FOUR
THE LAND of COTTON

FIVE
INSPIRED to TEACH

SIX
IF NOT US, WHO?

SEVEN
IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

EIGHT
WE SHALL OVERCOME

NINE
GUESS WHOS GOING to COLLEGE?

TEN
DREAMING the IMPOSSIBLE

ELEVEN
LEAVE the BOOKS

TWELVE
BACK to MOUND BAYOU

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

M y parents were foot soldiers in President Johnsons War on Poverty. One of the presidents first actions after announcing his new program in 1964 was to send his lieutenants in search of the poorest spot in the country. Expecting to find it in Appalachia, they were surprised to discover it instead in the cotton fields of Mississippi.

By 1967, with a fresh new degree in public health, my pediatrician father decided to enlist. During the height of the civil rights movement, my family moved to a small, all-black town in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, where my father opened a clinic and my mother, Aura Kruger, taught English at the local high school. I was the only white student at my junior high.

Both my mother and I kept journals of our time in Mound Bayou. Hers is the basis of the true story you are about to read. I burned mine decades ago because I was embarrassed by all that happened and couldnt imagine ever wanting to share my story. Reading my mothers journals, I was surprised how vividly and completely those memories came back. More than that, I was pleased to discover that I could almost reconstruct what Id written as a child. Some of these re-creations are included here.

In a few cases, I have changed the names of individuals involved to respect and protect their privacy.