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Blood
Justice: The Lynching of Mack Charles Parker
by Howard Smead
Book Description: Based on previously unreleased FBI and Justice Department
documents, extensive interviews with many of the surviving principals involved
in the case, and a variety of newspaper accounts, Smead meticulously reconstructs
the full story of one of the last lynchings in America, detailing a grim,
dramatic, but nearly forgotten episode from the Civil Rights era.
In 1959, a white mob in Poplarville, Mississippi abducted a young black
man named Mack Charles Parker--recently charged with the rape of a white
woman--from his jail cell, beat him, carried him across state lines, finally
shot him, and left his body in the Pearl River. A massive FBI investigation
ensued, and two grand juries met to investigate the lynching, yet no arrests
were ever made. Smead presents a vivid picture of a small Southern town
gripped by racism and distrust of federal authority, and describes the
travesty of justice that followed in the wake of the lynching. Ultimately
revealing more than an account of a single lynching, he offers what he
calls "a glimpse at the tidal forces at work in the South on the eve of
the civil rights revolution."
Paperback from Oxford University Press
Book Published: March, 1988 |
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Never Too Late : A Prosecutor's Story of Justice in the Medgar Evars
Case
by Bobby DeLaughter
Listed under Medgar Evers
Leavenworth
Train: A Fugitive's Search for Justice in the Vanishing West
by Joe Jackson
Renowned for violence and lawlessness, the American frontier was in
reality a safe and orderly region, at least by 19th-century standards.
Alcoholism and suicide were persistent troubles, and, to be sure, the occasional
murder or crime against property troubled the populace. Still, such things
did not happen often, and when they did, justice was swift and punishment
severe.
Frank Grigware, the protagonist of Joe Jackson's swift-moving Leavenworth
Train, learned all this the hard way. Not particularly bright, plagued
by hard luck, the young man devoted himself to petty thievery, scratching
out a dishonest living in the rough mining towns of the Northwest. His
fortunes turned still worse when he fell into the company of a gang of
suspected train robbers. Charged as an accomplice to their crimes on what
Jackson considers to be less than solid evidence, he was packed off to
the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary to serve a long sentence. He didn't
remain behind bars for long, however. He and three fellow convicts escaped
by hijacking a supply train, and Grigware kept running until he reached
Canada, where he took up residence and lived out a long life. His identity
was eventually revealed, and American officials--among them J. Edgar Hoover--demanded
to have him returned.
To reveal who won would spoil Jackson's story. In telling it, Jackson
relies heavily on imagined dialogue, and his prose is sometimes overly
mannered ("instead of a cave of gold, they found a grimy cell," "everyone
danced Death's crazy reel"). Still, his tale is full of unlikely twists
that keep it moving along nicely, and fans of Western history and true
crime alike will enjoy reading it. --Gregory McNamee - Amazon.com
Paperback from Carroll & Graf
Book Published: September, 2002 |
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Long
Walk to Freedom
by Nelson Mandela
Paperback from Back Bay Books
Book Published: 01 October, 1995 |
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Mississippi
Mud : Southern Justice and the Dixie Mafia
by Edward Humes
Biloxi, Mississippi, has a "strip" of nightclubs and casinos where
prostitution, drugs, and crooked gambling flourish unchecked. An older
couple who thought they were retiring to a quiet seaside town got too deeply
involved with local politics and the Dixie Mafia and were murdered. The
investigation would've sunk beneath the muddy swirl of graft and business
as usual but for the tenacious efforts of the victims' daughter. Despite
death threats and indifferent law enforcement officials, she hired a private
detective and swore to do whatever it took to bring her parents' killers
to trial. Horror/suspense writer Peter Straubfinds the story reminiscent
of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen: "Like those writers, Edward Humes can
make the wild, amoral, scheming sleazoids he parades before our eyes all
but sing and dance on the page. Here is America, fat and happy, both hands
crammed into the till." Mississippi Mud was a 1995 finalist for the Edgar
Award in Fact Crime. Amazon.com
Mass Market Paperback from Pocket Books
Book Published: 01 December, 1995 |
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