Campbell's Historical Memoir 'Brother To A Dragonfly'

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Will Davis Campbell’s historical memoir, Brother to a Dragonfly, which has been reprinted to include a foreword from President Jimmy Carter and US House of Representatives Member John Lewis, narrates the life of a poor white boy from Amite County, Mississippi who becomes a Baptist preacher and civil rights activist. Will Campbell was born in 1924 in a small town segregated community. In the foreword to the new edition of the book, US House of Representatives member John Lewis is quoted, “We’ve come as far as we have, I believe, because we’ve been led by a force bigger than we are. I call it the Spirit of History.” Brother to a Dragonfly expresses the hardships and ridicule white Southerners faced for supporting the Civil Rights Movement and …show more content…

The medicine turned out to be amphetamines, which were normalized and prescribed rapidly throughout the war. Joe’s addiction progressed but went unnoticed until he started to get violent with his wife, who left him and took the children. Will sought help for his brother, but he was partly in denial of the severity. Joe was finally convinced to see a psychiatrist who deemed he should be hospitalized and this cycle continued for a while. Joe finally breaks and admits to Will he was addicted to amphetamines, he had used them for a midday pick me up. Over time, the pills started to have the opposite effect and sparked his irritability, so he would use Seconals to calm himself down and sleep. In one of Joe’s final hospital stays, he seems to snap and make comments on the number of black patients at the hospital. Will is shocked and reminds him of the book, Freedom Road, and Joe calls the author a communist. “Didn’t you ever know that? Howard Fast was a communist!” He began to chuckle in a fashion of ridicule. “You got seduced, Brother. You got converted by a goddamn communist. Ain’t that a bitch? Yea. That is a good