The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980 is a non-fiction book by Charles C. Bolton, published in 2005 by the University Press of Mississippi.
Documents from the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and oral histories were used as sources.[1]
The book presents information in historic sequence.[1]
The establishment of a segregated schooling system in Mississippi is detailed at the first chapter. The white community's opposition to Brown v. Board of Education is detailed in the midpoint of the book.[2]
Hassan Kwame Jeffries of Ohio State University wrote that the work "succeeds in" explaining the effect discriminatory practices had on the state's government-operated K-12 education.[1]