BOOK REPORT
A Catalyst for Change
I
JAMES L. DICKERSON THIS UM ALUMNUS AND MISSISSIPPI NATIVE IS THE AUTHOR OF MORE THAN 30 BOOKS, AND HAS WORKED AS A MAGAZINE EDITOR AND PUBLISHER, NEWSPAER EDITOR, REPORTER, COLUMNIST, BOOK CRITIC AND SOCIAL WORKER. BY LAREECA RUCKER
In 1948, James L. Dickerson’s mother was a bank teller in Greenville, Miss., who hired Salle Mae Elle, an 18-year-old Black woman with a young son, to be his babysitter. Dickerson, a toddler who spat at other babysitters and threw tantrums, approved of the hire. But, some members of the community disapproved of their interactions. One day, an angry woman approached Dickerson’s mother at the bank with her hands on her hips. “I just want to let you know that your babysitter has got your son playing in the city park with a Black boy,” Dickerson said, recalling the woman’s words. “The way Mother told it, the woman was tossing the N-word around in a loud voice like it was a cheer at a football game.” After work, his mother asked Elle if she had taken Jim to the park, and Elle asked if doing so had been a mistake. After pausing, his mother told her to take him there anytime she wanted. “So I integrated the city parks in Greenville,” he said. “I was always proud of that.”
James L. Dickerson with his beloved babysitter Sallie Mae Elle in Greenville, Miss. in the late 1940s.
You can’t tell Dickerson’s life story without examining it through the lens of the American civil rights movement in Mississippi. The babysitter story is one of many he has collected over the years as much of his life and career as a reporter, editorial writer and nonfiction author was shaped by ideas of race and inequality in the South. Dickerson, head of the publishing company Sartoris Literary Group, has authored more than 30 books. He worked as a staff writer and editor at three Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers — The Commercial Appeal of Memphis; the Clarion Ledger/Jackson Daily News of Jackson; and the Delta Democrat-Times of Greenville. After spending 20 years as a Mississippi expat in Memphis and Nashville, Dickerson moved to Rankin County about 20 years ago to be closer to family.
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In the 1980s, he published and edited a national magazine titled Nine-O-One Network that made history by becoming the first magazine published in the South to obtain newsstand distribution in all 50 states and overseas in countries, such as the United Kingdom, Spain and Portugal. The 1968 University of Mississippi graduate recently visited the School of Journalism and New Media to discuss the possibility of creating a Chair of Excellence in Investigative Reporting and Opinion Writing with a focus on newspapers, magazines and books. Dickerson also discussed the creation of a James L. Dickerson Literary Trust, making an endowment for the chair. The discussion stems from the success of the book, Colonel Tom Parker: The Curious Life of Elvis Presley’s Eccentric Manager, an investigative biography. Originally published in 2001 by Cooper Square Press, Dickerson purchased the book rights two years ago and republished it under his Sartoris imprint. “Shortly after I purchased the rights to the book, an executive at Warner Bros., called my literary agent and inquired about optioning the book for noted director Baz Luhrmann for his upcoming film about El-
