The Impact of Segregation in the South: A Social Coming-of-Age Story in 'Mississippi Trial, 1955' Anonymous 8th Grade

In Mississippi Trial, 1955 by Chris Crowe, the author tells a story about a boy named Hiram who comes back to Greenwood, Mississippi to visit his Grandfather. When he revisits and goes down memory lane, he discovers that a lot of things have changed since he had lived in the South as a young child. He slowly discovers that there are a lot of changes in the South that he hasn’t realized as a naive boy and it hits him hard like a brick when he realized that everything he thought was true, was basically a lie. Then, a savage murder of an African-American boy that Hiram had befriended takes place. Hiram has to stand up for what he knows is right and rely on his instincts when the people closest to him reveal the truth that he might not want to hear, developing both moral and social consciousness by confronting instances of injustice.

Crowe's book is based around a main conflict, segregation. The major conflict in the story is segregation between the different skin colors and how they are treated. When Hiram visits his Grandfather in Greenwood, Mississippi, he notices how African Americans were treated differently. They were disrespected, looked down at, and treated in a generally judgmental manner by prejudiced whites. When a...