Sources of Light by Margaret McMullan – review

Set in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, Sources of Light is a well-crafted coming-of-age story about fourteen-year-old Samantha Thomas and how she develops a love for photography and documents key events in the Civil Rights Movement. It’s a warm and beautifully told novel that follows Sam’s attempts to fit in during her freshman year of high school, living in a single-parent home with her mother after her war hero father dies fighting in the Vietnam War. Her Mom can’t afford to get much in the way of “extras” for Sam, and she feels embarrassed at having to wear her cousin Tine’s hand-me-down dresses.

At first, Sam just struggles to fit in and to be more like the most popular girl in school, Mary Alice McLemore. All of the other girls seem to be from more wealthy families than hers, and she is afraid of saying things she thinks they will consider to be stupid. She eagerly anticipates her first dance there, with Mary Alice’s older brother, Stone, as her date. But, at Mary Alice’s birthday party, Sam hears Mary Alice calling her younger brother a derogatory word white people sometimes would call black people. She used it so casually, as if Mary Alice said it every day, and it makes Sam start to question in her mind how different races relate to each other, and why none of the other girls at the party seemed shocked to hear the word.

Her mother teaches art history at a local college, and one day brings to their house another instructor at the school, her new friend, Perry Walker, who is an accomplished photographer with his photos in several famous magazines. He lends one of the three cameras he has with him to Sam that night, and this begins her interest in photography. Perry gives her ongoing lessons, and teaches her how to mix chemicals and develop the photos she takes.

Sam’s mother goes with Perry to lecture at the black college, Tougaloo. Perry is there to document the lecture with his camera, and Sam is also with them. Unfortunately, a newspaper photographer takes photos, too, and Sam and her mother’s pictures get splashed on the front page of the local newspaper. The next thing you know, when they get home, there’s garbage all over their lawn, they get threatening phone calls, and someone leaves a dead black cat at their front door.

Still, Sam’s main goal, like most of ours probably would be, is to fit in, so she’s thrilled when she and her Mom are invited over to the McLemore’s house for supper. They have the house and family Sam dreams of having, and there’s even a swimming pool in their back yard. She is dismayed when her mother questions some of their viewpoints, like when Mrs. McLemore states: “The coloreds serve a purpose here. Unlike the Chinese.” Sam knows Mrs. McLemore shouldn’t say bigoted things like that, but she also knows they are guests in the house, and she hopes Stone will ask her to the upcoming dance.

But, it’s not much longer before Sam begins to document the racial tensions in Jackson, like the violence that erupts from a lunch counter sit-in at a restaurant in town. The people of Jackson seem to want to spend their energy and attention on what they refer to as the “black problem” rather than schools, houses, and roads. To the townspeople, Sam, her mother and Perry are “agitators,” when they take an interest in racial equality, and help to register blacks to vote.

Though I grew up during the 1960′s and 1970′s, when a major chunk of the Civil Rights Movement was going on, I lived in Illinois. For whatever reason or reasons, much of what was happening didn’t seem to directly affect me at the time. Maybe it was because I didn’t live in Chicago, I don’t know. I grew up thinking of the state as “Lincoln Land,” a place where racial injustices didn’t exist, though now I know that they did. I heard about race riots on the news occasionally, and church bombings, but they seemed to be things that were happening far away from me.

The unfortunate fact is, however, that the KKK existed in Illinois just as they did in many other states, and later on they planned to get publicity from marching through Skokie. The schools I attended were integrated, I grew up with exchange students, and around people of several different races and cultural/national backgrounds. Also, I grew up not lacking for anything, unlike Sam, and not having to wear hand-me-downs, or think of buying a Coke as an “extra,” some luxury only bought very rarely. The people from Jackson, Mississippi that Sources of Light depicts were largely either unknown to me, or I just considered anyone who held bigoted views to be archaic throwbacks to a very sad chapter in our nation’s history. I was naive, yes, but that’s how I was, wanting to see our country as a place that had outgrown stereotypical and bigoted points of view.

In the year 1962, someone like Samantha in the heart of the South, in Jackson, Mississippi (unlike myself, who grew up under other circumstances), can’t help but to notice how differently blacks and whites are treated, and see that racial inequality is still flourishing. She realizes it’s wrong, and it’s wrong for Stone to think of her as being throughout several generation racially “pure” and thus suitable for going on a date with. But, she’s torn between wanting to fit in and not cause waves, and her desire to document the injustices she sees around her every day of her life.

Sources of Light is an emotionally charged, thought-provoking novel that depicts the Civil Rights movement through the eyes of a young teen who just wants to fit in, but finds herself torn between that, her fondness for Stone, and her love of photography and desire to do what she knows is morally right. It’s a book that will stay with you long after you finish reading it. I highly recommend Sources of Light.