Hewitt Clarke

 Hewitt Clarke

Mr. Clarke is one of the foremost writers of southern history.  Focusing much of his effort on East and Central Mississippi, his extensively researched books can be found in private libraries across the south.  Thunder at Meridian, his first publication, remains the definitive account of Lauderdale County history.  Not merely a summary of the writing of other authors, his works have been received with high acclaim and are the result of painstaking, onsite research extracting the true story of Mississippi directly from archeological digs, walking the back woods trails and speaking directly with the people and the families of people who actually lived the events.  Mr. Clarke's writing gives voice to the real story of Mississippi history.  More

And the nation may have noticed, but the media never reported, that none of these destructive race riots occurred in the South.  (288 Pages, $25.00)  More

He Saw the Elephant.  This is a true story about the amazing Civil War adventures of Lt. Charles Read, CSN.  Mild mannered Charley Read was an Annapolis graduate from Mississippi. He entered the Confederate Navy at age 21. One of his shipmates said he could have easily stepped out of the pages of a Dumas novel.

His tombstone in Meridian reads: With a crew of 17 he captured and burned 22 Union ships in 21 days and struck terror across the eastern seaboard.  (263 Pages, $25.00) More

War Stories from Mississippi.  War Stories takes the reader back through time from Vietnam to the Civil War with graphic descriptions of bloody battles where Mississippians fought and died. In 1934 a young man named Morris Cohen graduated from Mississippi State College. It was Cohen's destiny to become a major atomic bomb spy for the Soviet Union, and this story takes the reader into the shadow world of Soviet spies and high level treason in the US Government.

Through the stories of the men who were there, he book relives the
 horrors of war right up to the Vietnam conflict.  (244 Pages, $25.00) More

Bloody Kemper.  This is a long buried true story, dark and foreboding, some of it almost unbelievable.

In the 1890's a sinister doctor entered into a conspiracy with local merchants. He poisoned as many as fifty of his own patients to collect life insurance. Newspapers called it the most heinous crime in the history of the nation.  The story flashes back to the Reconstruction period after the Civil War.  A bitter feud between two prominent families led to what is called "the massacre". They say blood ran in the streets. The county is still called Bloody Kemper and the old feud is still going on. (302 Pages, $90.00) More

Thunder at Meridian.  A piece of land in the hills of east Mississippi. The people living there for 300 years. This is the action filled true story that was twenty years in the making.

The story begins in 1695 with Alabama Mingo, Chief of the Choctaw war village of Koosa Town. Pushmataha lived there, and his nephews Oklahoma and Nittekechi.  It continues through the raging Civil War years with all the danger and hardships of a Confederate soldier and a young naval officer in combat.  Then the Meridian Riot that exploded for three violent days during Reconstruction in 1871. (390 Pages, $90.00)  More

To survive, most of the business places along Highway 80 turned into dangerous gambling joints and honky tonks, where those who survived learned to sit with their backs to the wall. (284 Pages, $28.00)  More