Delta epiphany

Spring 1967 found Senator Robert F. Kennedy on his knees inside a dilapidated Mississippi home, attempting to draw a reaction from a withdrawn little boy. The toddler was slumped over, idly picking at dried rice and beans scattered across the packed-earth floor. Kennedy laid a hand on the child's swollen belly and brushed his cheek, but after several minutes with no response, the senator left through the rear door, visibly moved.

Ellen B. Meacham uses that encounter as a starting point for a wider account. The book traces the historical, economic, and political currents that shaped the lives of the children Kennedy met in the Delta that year, and follows how those forces played out in the decades afterward.