{"id":165545,"date":"2026-09-03T10:41:33","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T15:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=165545"},"modified":"2026-09-03T10:41:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T15:41:34","slug":"new-book-by-delta-newspaperman-jim-abbott-reading-signing-sept-8-at-off-square-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/new-book-by-delta-newspaperman-jim-abbott-reading-signing-sept-8-at-off-square-books\/","title":{"rendered":"New Book by Delta Newspaperman Jim Abbott, Reading & Signing Sept. 8 at Off Square Books"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Paper Man: Chasing the Truth in the Mississippi Delta<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n

\u201cThis is a riveting story, written with precision and grace.”
\u2014Steve Yarbrough<\/strong>, Novelist and winner of the Richard Wright Award and the Robert Penn Warren Award<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A new memoir, Paper Man: Chasing the Truth in the Mississippi Delta<\/em><\/strong> (Nautilus, $34.95) launches this September. Paper Man tracks the 38-year career of Jim Abbott<\/strong>, editor and publisher of the Enterprise-Tocsin<\/em><\/strong> (Indianola, Mississippi), as he searched for the truth, fought for justice, and battled systemic, institutional, and personal racism in efforts to make Indianola\u2014birthplace of both the White Citizens\u2019 Council <\/strong>and<\/em> B.B. King<\/strong>\u2014a better place to live for all its residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Told in anecdote-rich vignettes, the book chronicles Abbott\u2019s front-row seat to history and his encounters\u2014in church pews and grocery-store aisles\u2014with the very characters he wrote about each week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Abbott, who was raised in a segregated community in Greenwood, Mississippi,<\/strong> stood among the throng of students jeering James Meredith in 1962. But his time away from the state\u2014a job at Disneyland, service with integrated troops in the Vietnam War, and befriending activists in the mid-1960s\u2014slowly chipped away at his views on race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kathy McCormick<\/strong>, a writer for Law & Order<\/em>, said, \u201cGrowing up white in the Jim Crow south, you had options. You could accept your racial privilege as natural and live your life accordingly. You could say \u201chell no\u201d and leave. Or you could stare clearly at the injustice\u2014and stay anyway, determined to contribute what you could to your community. Your whole community. Jim Abbott stayed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Columnist Sid Salter<\/strong> wrote, \u201cA son of the Mississippi Delta, Jim Abbott was no crusading interloper. He was a Mississippian who knew which political and social anthills not to kick\u2014yet he kicked them anyway because they needed to be kicked.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During Abbott\u2019s rich life, he crossed paths with likes of James Meredith, Walt Disney, Duke Ellington, Robert Kennedy, B.B. King, Brooke Shields, Craig Claiborne, Pops Staples, John Fogerty, and Gene Hackman, among many more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ralph Eubanks<\/strong>, author of When It\u2019s Darkness on the Delta<\/em><\/strong>, said, \u201cJim Abbott\u2019s Paper Man is the story of one man\u2019s love of the Delta and Mississippi, a love he professed by bravely practicing journalistic integrity as well as human kindness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paper Man<\/em> takes the reader from the Ole Miss riot to the jungles of Vietnam and from hiking the Grand Tetons to a deserted, post-Katrina New Orleans, but it is Abbott\u2019s years behind the editor\u2019s desk in Indianola that gives the book its greatest charm\u2014and its lasting lessons about the power and the necessity of local journalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paper Man: Chasing the Truth in the Mississippi Delta<\/em> is available now at independent bookstores throughout the South.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abbott will read and sign Paper Man <\/em>at Off Square Books, Tuesday September 8 at 5:30 pm<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paper Man: Chasing the Truth in the Mississippi Delta \u201cThis is a riveting story, written with precision and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":165546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14439,35027],"tags":[35717,1504,3684,28355,35718,5,642,5317,35715,35716,17749,35719,602],"class_list":["post-165545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-books","category-upcoming-events","tag-entrprise-tocsin","tag-greenwood","tag-indianola","tag-jim-abbott","tag-kathy-mccormick","tag-mississippi","tag-ms","tag-nautilus-publishing","tag-paper-man","tag-paper-man-chasing-the-truth-in-the-mississippi-delta","tag-ralph-eubanks","tag-sid-salter","tag-square-books"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/0908-Jim-Abbott-for-Paper-Man.png?fit=900%2C900&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165545"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165549,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165545\/revisions\/165549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}