Edward Blackmon, Jr. | Barbara Blackmon
Book Release Coming October 6, 2026. Audiobook to be announced.
About the Book
Two lives devoted to justice. One shared purpose.
Mississippi gave Edward and Barbara Blackmon—and the generations before them—a vantage the rest of the nation is only now beginning to feel. What Americans are living through today is not a new reality improvised in real time. It is the same ancient machinery that has always been here.
They spent their lives inside a system built to contain them: segregated schools and courthouses, voting maps drawn to dilute Black power, courtrooms that treated justice as a privilege. Locked as a teenager in a Canton jail during the civil-rights struggle, Edward decided then to become a lawyer so the law could serve as a shield rather than a weapon. He served more than four decades in the Mississippi House of Representatives and helped redraw the state’s political maps, more than doubling Black representation. The National Law Journal twice named him one of the nation’s top ten litigators.
Barbara Blackmon broke barriers of her own. She earned her degree from Jackson State University at nineteen, an MBA from the University of Alabama, a law degree from the University of Mississippi, and an LL.M. in taxation from New York University. She became the first Black woman to represent Madison, Yazoo, and Holmes counties in the Mississippi Senate from a majority-white district, later won the Democratic nomination to run for lieutenant governor, and, with her husband, built a statewide law practice in Canton that took the fight from the Capitol floor to the courtroom.
Two Minds, One Rhythm is the story of how two formidable minds learned to move together toward goals that serve humanity—and why we must unite now to heal a fractured nation before it is too late. This book does not stop at diagnosis. It offers a path forward: work, faith, education, and shared purpose. See the other side without surrendering yours. Rebuild trust. Choose courage over fear. The fractures can still be closed—not if we wait until the rest of the world finishes watching us come apart.
Praise for Two Minds One Rhythm
Early Reviews
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” is one of Dr. King’s most famous statements. But it doesn’t bend toward justice on its own; it bends because of the work and lives of people like Ed and Barbara Blackmon. Two Minds One Rhythm is essential reading to see the obstacles, the hate, the hurt, the discrimination they faced. But it is also essential in showing the power of work and faith to overcome these barriers, and the optimism to continue to believe that the places where we are fractured can be fixed and that America is worth the fight.
Ray Mabus
Secretary of the Navy 2009–2017; Governor of Mississippi, 1988–1992; Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, 1994–1996
This is a must-read for the nation; it all begins in Mississippi.
Congressman Bennie Thompson
Second Congressional District; Chairman, January 6th Committee
Barbara, Ed, and I share many remarkable experiences trying to improve our state. While they grew up on “the wrong side of the track,” I grew up in perhaps the poorest county in Mississippi, the child of day laborers in the brutal 1950s forestry industry.
Ed served as Chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee—when he spoke, the chamber fell attentively silent. Barbara’s intellect, talent, and work ethic were undeniable from the day she was sworn in as the Senator from Madison County. I was proud to appoint her Vice Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and when the Republican Chairman suffered a heart attack, she became interim Chairman. Under her leadership, the committee never missed a beat—even though she was a Democrat. This kind of integrity almost never happens in today’s vehemently partisan legislatures.
In my fifty years as an attorney and legislator, no one I worked with was more respected by both parties than the Blackmons. As you read Two Minds One Rhythm, you will come to know, respect, and appreciate them as I always have.
Eddie Briggs
Former First Republican Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi since Reconstruction
Two Minds One Rhythm doesn’t just tell the story of a divided nation—it makes you feel the pulse of it. As someone who has spent his career stepping into other people’s truths, on-screen from Shameless to Walker to Mercy to Nemesis, I know what it takes to make an audience believe that two different perspectives can share the same heartbeat. Barbara and Edward Blackmon have done something rare here: they’ve written with two distinct voices and found the rhythm that holds them together. This book doesn’t ask you to pick a side. It asks you to listen—really listen—to a story America needs right now. Two Minds One Rhythm is honest, courageous, and deeply human. I’m proud to stand behind it.
Jeff Pierre
Actor (Shameless, Walker, Mercy, Nemesis)
Truth without bitterness. Hope without illusion. A powerful call to rediscover our way to saving our fractured nation before the chance slips away.
Brandon Copeland
10-year NFL veteran; University of Pennsylvania Professor; Co-founder of Athletes.org
The Blackmons have gifted us a literary diamond. Not since Brother to a Dragonfly has such a meaningful accounting of Mississippi memory been inked on paper. Well done, Barbara and Ed!
The Mississippi June Bug Review
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Book Release Coming October 6, 2026. Audiobook to be announced.