Deer Creek Drive: A Reckoning of Memory and Murder - Beverly Lowry

Written by Beverly Lowry
Read by Beverly Lowry
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Deer Creek Drive: A Reckoning of Memory and Murder in the Mississippi Delta

Publisher: Books on Tape
Release date: August 2, 2022
Duration: 16:34:49

The stunning true story of a murder that rocked the Mississippi Delta and forever shaped one author’s life and perception of home.

In 1948, in the most stubbornly Dixiefied corner of the Jim Crow south, society matron Idella Thompson was viciously murdered in her own home: stabbed at least 150 times and left facedown in one of the bathrooms. Her daughter, Ruth Dickins, was the only other person in the house. She told authorities a Black man she didn’t recognize had fled the scene, but no evidence of the man’s presence was uncovered. When Dickins herself was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, the community exploded. Petitions pleading for her release were drafted, signed, and circulated, and after only six years, the governor of Mississippi granted Ruth Dickins an indefinite suspension of her sentence and she was set free.

In Deer Creek Drive, Beverly Lowry—who was ten at the time of the murder and lived mere miles from the Thompsons’ home—Focusing less on the crime itself and more on white privilege in that time and place, Lowry elegantly details Southern daily life and the struggles for equality that eventually led to desegregation. This timely reminder of the injustices of America’s past deserves a wide readership.

Cover images: (pruning shears) Tragedy-of-the-Month, 1949, Triangle Publications, Inc.; (background) Special Collections, University of Mississippi Libraries