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The Outskirts of Hope: A Memoir of the 1960s Deep South Kindle Edition

by Jo Ivester (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 467 ratings
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In 1967, when Jo Ivester was ten years old, her father transplanted his young family from a suburb of Boston to a small town in the heart of the Mississippi cotton fields, where he became the medical director of a clinic that served the poor population for miles around. But ultimately it was not Ivester’s father but her mother—a stay-at-home mother of four who became a high school English teacher when the family moved to the South—who made the most enduring mark on the town.







In The Outskirts of Hope, Ivester uses journals left by her mother, as well as writings of her own, to paint a vivid, moving, and inspiring portrait of her family’s experiences living and working in an all-black town during the height of the civil rights movement.
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  1. Print length
    240 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    She Writes Press
  5. Publication date
    April 7, 2015
  6. File size
    4983 KB
  7. Page Flip
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  8. Word Wise
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“What makes this book particularly valuable is its vivid depiction of the abhorrent consequences of legalized segregation. What gives it heart is the window it opens to the personal journeys of mother and daughter. An important, riveting history lesson that, unfortunately, is still relevant today.”
―Kirkus Reviews

“A sensitive and powerful memoir of racial change in the South in the 1960s.”
―Booklist

“The Outskirts of Hope is a yesteryear tale (1967) that could not be more pertinent and helpful to the racially complex and perturbed time we are living in now.”
―Norman Lear

“A powerful personal perspective of a tumultuous time in America, seen through the eyes of a mother and her daughter navigating family and societal currents in the midst of the civil rights movement. White and Jewish from Boston, the family is transplanted into the segregated Deep South of the 1960s, trying to make a difference in people’s lives. Although their new world is fraught with fear and anxiety, their strength of character and dedication to being allies rather than bystanders results in their participation in history.”
―Barry Curtiss-Lusher, National Chairman of the Anti-Defamation League

“Not all stories about the south are fictional and have characters in them named Atticus and Scout. Some are true and have real people in them named Aura and Jo. But just as Atticus and Scout have seared themselves into our cultural consciousness, Aura and Jo will take up residence in your own after reading The Outskirts of Hope. I began this book thinking it was about civil rights and Mississippi and a Jewish family’s singular, brave saga there in the 1960s. I ended it realizing it is a story about us all. It is an American one. And it is one, told forgivingly, about forgiveness.”
―Kevin Sessums, author of Mississippi Sissy and I Left It on the Mountain

“The Outskirts of Hope is a highly personal narrative that shines a light on the struggles within the Deep South in a passionate, moving way. Told with wit, warmth, and heart, this family’s story places the reader right on the ground as Mound Bayou, Mississippi copes with a world reluctant to change, providing an intimate view of the Civil Rights Movement most have never even considered.”
―Anthony Rudel, author of Hello, Everybody!: The Dawn of American Radio

“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.”
―Steve Adler, Mayor of Austin, Texas

“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 won’t be able to stop.”
―Forrest Preece, Columnist, West Austin News

“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, Emeritus Professor, Stanford University

“This is a fascinating tale of a family who talked the talk and walked the walk during the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The family with their youngest three children left a middle class New England suburb and moved 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 and the kids survived, albeit dramatically at times.” ―Dave Richards, former Civil Rights Commissioner

“This is the fearless mother-daughter memoir about a white family's move from Boston to a small black town in the Mississippi Delta to help launch the nation's first community health center providing health care to the poor and neediest. The leaders of the civil rights struggle―black and white, male and female―are famous, but we hear much less about the 'ordinary people' in the families that came with them. Aura Kruger and Jo Ivester's 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 of Community Medicine, City University of New York Medical School

“Ivester’s 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 person’s 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

About the Author

Jo Ivester spent two years of her childhood living in a trailer in Mound Bayou, where she was the only white student at her junior high. She finished high school in Florida before attending Reed, MIT, and Stanford in preparation for a career in transportation and manufacturing. Following the birth of her fourth child, she became a teacher. She and her husband teach each January at MIT and travel extensively, splitting their time between Texas, Colorado, and Singapore.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00TQMRALA
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ She Writes Press (April 7, 2015)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 7, 2015
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 4983 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 467 ratings

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  2. Jo Ivester

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    At the height of the civil rights movement, Jo Ivester’s father moved their family to the poorest county in the nation to start a medical clinic. She was 10 years old and the only white student in her class.

    In her memoir, The Outskirts of Hope: A Memoir of the 1960s Deep South (She Writes Press, April 2015), Ivester tells a very personal story of her family’s journey to the segregated American South. One of only two white families, and the only Jews, in all-black Mound Bayou, Miss., in 1967, Ivester and her family had a unique, front-row view of America during one of its most racially tumultuous eras. The Outskirts of Hope chronicles the experience and how her mother, who became a teacher, inspired the entire Mound Bayou community.

    The Outskirts of Hope was called “a sensitive and powerful memoir of racial change in the South in the 1960s” by Booklist, and has continued to receive national attention since its release. Ivester has spoken on NPR’s “The Author’s Corner” and “Texas Standard,” and has been featured in the Austin Chronicle, Miami Herald, and many other media outlets.

    After her time in Mound Bayou, Ivester went on to finish high school in Florida and attend Reed College, where she studied physics. She then received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and urban planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Later she graduated from Stanford University with an MBA in preparation for her career in transportation and manufacturing.

    Ivester has worked for large organizations including the San Francisco Municipal Railway, where she served as a deputy general manager, and Applied Materials, where she ran a factory. She began to teach following the birth of her fourth child, first as a substitute math teacher and then as an adjunct professor at St. Edward's University.

    Ivester and her husband help teach a course each January at MIT and travel extensively, splitting their time between Texas and Colorado. In her free time, she likes to hike and ski in the mountains and walk on the beach.

    See more on the author's page
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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
467 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Mim Zollars Sapparrart
5.0 out of 5 stars Lovely, compelling...
Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2015
Verified Purchase
I related to this story on many levels, although I have little in common with the actual incidents. Once I picked up "The Outskirts of Hope," I couldn't put it down. I was slightly younger than Jo during the civil rights movement, too young to have such a considered experience, yet always intrigued by the swirling black and white memories I hold from this time. I felt privileged to glimpse the quiet courage and profound compassion of Aura. A shy woman, deposited by her admirable husband in a small town in the Deep South at a time when no one quite knew the rules or how to gracefully embrace the changing times or the unknown danger & anger that could result from ignorance and resistance to change (at the hands of the KKK and others). That the crux of this story revolves around Jo's brutal loss of innocence and the ensuing potential for violence toward the town and the perpetrators as a result, makes my head spin. This is a beautiful story of an heroic family and a loving testament to the community that embraced and allowed them in. Bravo.
2 people found this helpful
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Cinthia Ritchie
4.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing and powerful
Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2016
Verified Purchase
I finished this book a few days ago and, I loved it.
It was truly engrossing. I read it in one day.
Here's a quick run-down: When she was ten years old, Jo Invester's family moved to a small, poverty-stricken, all-black Mississippi town in the heart of the cotton fields. Her father, who was a doctor, opened a clinic (her father is largely absent from the narrative and one gets the feeling that he was emotionally absent from the family's lives as well).
It was 1967, smack in the middle of the Civil Rights era, when Jim Crow laws were still enforced (even though the Civil Rights Act had passed in 1964), the Klu Klux Klan periodically swooped down upon towns instilling fear.
Revisiting such a time in history isn't easy, and the book often caused me to squirm, such as when barefoot high school students tied rages around their feet to protect themselves from in cold. (This in 1967, when most of living up North were sitting cozy in living rooms watching The Monkeys on TV. The differences between such lives was startling. It hit like a slap.)
Ivester wrote much of the book from her mother's notebooks and from her mother's point of view, and it's evident that she worked hard at maintaining her mother's voice. Yet, at times the mother came across as too good, too committed. It's almost as if Ivester were unable to distance herself from the role of a daughter to the role of a writer. There were points where I groaned, points that sounded as if the white-savior-teacher-works-hard-to-save-the-poor-black-children.
Yet, Ivester's mother (Aura Kruger) was truly committed toward this cause. She was a teacher who worked with disadvantaged youth and made a difference in countless lives while also participating in civil rights and gay rights marches. There's even a documentary about her work teaching Shakespeare in underprivileged schools (Hard Lessons).
While the voice felt forced at time, I doubt that most readers will notice. As someone who reads for voice, however, it nagged at me.
The chapter headings were an added point of the book. Here Ivester includes photos and civil rights era excerpts and it adds an extra layer to the book.
The Outskirts of Hope is a powerful read that tells a powerful story in a sad and troubling time of history we too often ignore.
One person found this helpful
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S.J.Coleman
5.0 out of 5 stars I couldn't put it down
Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2015
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This is a compelling, true story of an ordinary family who spends two years in extraordinary circumstances. It tells a captivating, honest tale of a white family in an all black town in the height of the civil rights movement.
It is full of tenderness, love, drama and goosebumps. The family, often ignorant of the dangers facing their neighbors from the KKK, through sheer passion for helping others, develops a deep love for the community, which is reciprocated in kind.
Until something happens, and they are forced to leave.

Full disclosure:
Aura and Leon were my Great Aunt And Uncle, and while I knew and loved them both, the familial relations are not my reason for the 5 star review.

I found the book a page-turner. It is full of daily simple acts of kindness and tenderness and the not-so-subtle horrors of discrimination. Aura is a delightfully flawed character beginning her journey as an honored educator. And the simple, innocent interjections from a 10-year-old Jo, bring goosebumps.

Read this.
21 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Donna Gamble
4.0 out of 5 stars they were brave people
Reviewed in Canada on October 27, 2015
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They dared to move to a totally black community at a dangerous time in history. It took courage and a gererous spirit
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Ben Erwin
5.0 out of 5 stars Moving tale of segregation based on the memoirs of one of those who were trying to make a change
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 11, 2015
Verified Purchase
Learning about what segregation* was like from movies and history textbooks in high school was a much different experience than reading a first person account like this one. It was moving to get a glimpse into the inner thoughts and emotions of Aura and Jo as they experienced life in rural Mississippi during segregation, and also to get a sense, through their eyes, of what it must have been like for the black families living in the poorest town in America. Here is just one of the quotes that I found moving: "Just then, the buses pulled up in front of the theater. ... I watched my students walk quietly in pairs... their heads held high as they crossed a whites-only threshold for the first time in their lives." Aura had negotiated with a theater for her students to watch "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" (out of state, as it was banned in Mississippi) but only if they didn't have to sit in the "colored balcony". *Of course "segregation" is a euphemism. What black Americans experienced during these times was nothing short of terrorism.
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