Includes index

The Sister I Never Knew -- Our Baby Sister -- Your Death Left Much Sorrow -- What a Difference a Year Makes -- Our Lineage Is a Strong One -- School Days -- Have Mamma and Daddy Gone Crazy? -- Not So Bad -- Church Life -- Thinking White -- High School Was Painful -- Buried Pain Will Come Up Again -- More Messed-Up Thinking -- The Year of the Debutante -- Bama -- Suicidal Thoughts -- The Family Business -- The Trials -- 4 Little Girls -- Justice -- Tracey -- Reconciliation -- Church Can Be a Painful Place -- White Church -- Unlucky at Love -- I Was the Wrong Color -- Getting Along -- What Does It Mean to Be Called a White Girl? -- Serving All the People -- Daddy's Dilemma -- Dogs Have Always Been My Closest Friends -- Crazy Stuff People Say -- Glory -- 9/11 -- Racial Issues -- Our Black Heritage -- We Aren't So Different -- Daddy Is with You Now -- Comfortable in My Own Skin -- So Long for Now -- The 4 Little Girls Memorial Fund -- The Morgan Project -- Sojourn into the Past

"Lisa McNair was born in 1964, one year after her older sister, Denise, was murdered in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Dear Denise is a collection of forty letters from Lisa addressed to the sister she never knew, but in whose shadow of sacrifice and lost youth she was raised. These letters offer an intimate look into the life of a family touched by one of the most heinous tragedies of the Civil Rights Movement. Written from the heart and with unflinching honesty, Lisa's letters apprise her late sister of all that has come to pass in the years since her death. Lisa considers her own challenges and accomplishments as a student in remarkably different--and very racially complex--schools; the birth of their baby sister, Kim; their father's election to the Alabama legislature; her evolving sense of faith and place, and sometimes lack thereof, within the Black church; her college experiences; and her own sense of self as she's matured into adulthood. She reveals some of the family's difficulties and health challenges, and shares some of their joys and celebrations. The letters are accompanied by twenty-nine black-and-white photographs, most of them from the McNair family collection, many of them taken by her father, a professional photographer who documented the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama both before and after Denise's murder. An unswervingly candid, gentle, and nuanced book, Dear Denise is a testament to one singular life lived bravely and truthfully (if sometimes confusedly or awkwardly), during decades of bewildering social change and in the shadow of one life never fully lived." --