AVAILABLE IN HARDBACK, PAPERBACK, EBOOK, AND AUDIO

Herbers's reporting began in 1951, when he covered the brutal execution of Willie McGee, a black man convicted for the rape of a white housewife, and the 1955 trial for the murder of Emmett Till, a black teenager killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. With immediacy and first-hand detail, Herbers describes the assassination of John F. Kennedy; the death of four black girls in the Birmingham, Alabama, church bombing; extensive travels and interviews with Martin Luther King Jr.; Ku Klux Klan cross-burning rallies and private meetings; the Freedom Summer murders in Philadelphia, Mississippi; and marches and riots in St. Augustine, Florida, and Selma, Alabama, that led to passage of national civil rights legislation.

Cover of Deep South Dispatch: Memoir of a Civil Rights Journalist
A link to the audiobook of Deep South Dispatch, available on Audible

  • “If it had not been for reporters like John, I do not know what would have happened to us as we fought for civil rights. He was not afraid to get in the way, often risking his life to uncover the truth. He made a lasting contribution to the movement and to America.”

    Congressman John Lewis

  • “John Herbers has always been one of our heroes. As young reporters we looked to him as a model of ferocity and fairness, devotion and determination. There was never anything ‘fake’ about John. He was the real deal, the best of a breed, and now, thanks to this marvelous book, a new generation of journalist will get to know him and learn from him, just as we did.”

    Cokie Roberts, bestselling author and commentator for ABC News and NPR, and Steve Roberts, former New York Times reporter and professor at Georgetown University

  • "Herbers's account of his own moral awakening to racial injustice in the south is one of the most salient aspects of 'Deep South Dispatch: Memoir of a Civil Rights Journalist.' John Herbers was among the bravest and most talented, which is why his memoir is such an important record of these critical years in American history."

    Wall Street Journal

An image of Anne Rosen with her father, John Herbers

I collaborated with my father, John N. Herbers, a former New York Times reporter, to produce a compelling retrospective of national and historical significance. My father had a front-row seat to report on a succession of landmark civil rights uprisings from the Emmett Till trial to the march on Selma, Alabama that rocked the country, the world, and his own conscience. His story is a timely and critical illumination of America’s current racial dilemmas and ongoing quest for justice.

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