Won Over

What was it like growing up white in Mississippi as the civil rights movement exploded in the 1950s and '60s? How did some white children reconcile the decency and fairness taught by their parents with the indecency and unfairness of the Mississippi "Way of Life," the euphemism applied to Jim Crow segregation? Won Over examines these questions as it traces the life journey of United States District Judge William Alsup, born in Mississippi in 1945 to hard-working parents who believed in segregation but also in fairness and decency. Therein lay the struggle at the core of the human predicament in the South. Alsup's memoir recounts the influences that drew the author from traditional Southern attitudes toward a color-blind ideal. Those influences included his older sister, Willanna, his closest circle of friends, a charismatic mentor in college, and the moral force of the civil rights movement.