Wisner, sometimes just called “Wiz,” was born in 1909 to a wealthy family with a lot of land in Mississippi, one of the states in the US South governed by Jim Crow laws, which discriminated against African Americans. He grew up in an insular, privileged household. As a child, he didn’t even put on his own clothes—he would lie down, raise his arms and legs, and his black maid would put his shirt and trousers on for him.51 Frank’s favorite book was Kim, by Rudyard Kipling, which told its story against the backdrop of the “Great Game” between the British and Russian Empires.52
