All Over but the Shoutin'

Chapter 26 finds Bragg in Haiti. “I had always wanted to go to Haiti, the same way I’d wanted to touch my mother’s hot iron. The resilience of its people amazed me. But in truth, what drew me to this place was its capacity for evil. A bloody coup gave me reason to come, and write of it” (201). 

Bragg covered the aftermath of the coup that toppled Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a true champion of the poor who was, of course, deposed by the rich and their allies in the military. Bragg got to witness his fill of evil among the Haitian poor who were slaughtered in great numbers in especially cruel ways. 

This chapter finds Bragg at home in Alabama for Christmas. He feels the tug of home, but he is fully committed to his career and living where the big stories are. 

Bragg’s life goes in an unexpected direction when he applies to become a Nieman Fellow in a special program for journalists at Harvard University.  During the interview process, he meets Bill Kovach, a former New York Times editor and reporter who had grown up in Tennessee and was sympathetic to a fellow Southerner. Kovach helped Bragg get into the program and became an important mentor to him.