On the Laps of Gods: The Red Summer of 1919 and the Struggle for Justice That Remade a NationCrown, 2008 M06 10 - 400 páginas They shot them down like rabbits . . . September 30, 1919. The United States teetered on the edge of a racial civil war. During the previous three months, racial fighting had erupted in twenty-five cities. And deep in the Arkansas Delta, black sharecroppers were meeting in a humble wooden church, forming a union and making plans to sue their white landowners, who for years had cheated them out of their fair share of the cotton crop. A car pulled up outside the church . . . What happened next has long been shrouded in controversy. In this heartbreaking but ultimately triumphant story of courage and will, journalist Robert Whitaker carefully documents—and exposes—one of the worst racial massacres in American history. Over the course of several days, posses and federal troops gunned down more than one hundred men, women, and children. But that is just the beginning of this astonishing story. White authorities also arrested more than three hundred black farmers, and in trials that lasted only a few hours, all-white juries sentenced twelve of the union leaders to die in the electric chair. One of the juries returned a death verdict after two minutes of deliberation. All hope seemed lost, and then an extraordinary lawyer from Little Rock stepped forward: Scipio Africanus Jones. Jones, who’d been born a slave, joined forces with the NAACP to mount an appeal in which he argued that his clients’ constitutional rights to a fair trial had been violated. Never before had the U.S. Supreme Court set aside a criminal verdict in a state court because the proceedings had been unfair, so the state of Arkansas, confident of victory, had a carpenter build coffins for the men. We all know the names of the many legendary heroes that emerged from the civil rights movement: Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King Jr. among them. Whitaker’s important book commemorates a legal struggle, Moore v. Dempsey, that paved the way for that later remaking of our country, and tells too of a man, Scipio Africanus Jones, whose name surely deserves to be known by all Americans. |
Contenido
1 | |
19 | |
The Red Summer of 1919 | 39 |
Helena | 55 |
The Killing Fields | 83 |
They Shot Them Down Like Rabbits | 102 |
Whitewash | 127 |
The Longest Train Ride Ever | 146 |
Scipio Africanus Jones | 185 |
The Constitutional Rights of a Race | 200 |
All Hope Gone | 230 |
Great Writ of Liberty | 248 |
Taft and His Court | 268 |
Hardly Less than Revolutionary | 286 |
Birth of a New Nation | 309 |
A Lesson Made Plain | 159 |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
On the Laps of Gods: The Red Summer of 1919 and the Struggle for Justice ... Robert Whitaker Vista previa limitada - 2009 |
On the Laps of Gods: The Red Summer of 1919 and the Struggle for Justice ... Robert Whitaker Vista de fragmentos - 2008 |
On the Laps of Gods: The Red Summer of 1919 and the Struggle for Justice ... Robert Whitaker Sin vista previa disponible - 2009 |
Términos y frases comunes
Adkins affidavits American Arkansas Democrat Arkansas Gazette Arkansas Race Riot Arkansas Supreme Court attorney brief and record Brough burned Camp Pike Camp Pike troops Chicago Chicago Defender citizens colored Committee cotton courtroom Crisis death defendants Delta Dempsey Ed Ware Elaine electric chair federal court fighting fired Fourteenth Amendment Frank Moore FSAA Govan Slough Governor guns habeas corpus Helena World Hoop Spur church Hornor jail Jenks John Judge Jackson June jury justice killed knew Lambrook Little Rock lynching McHaney McRae Memphis Miller Mississippi murder NAACP Negroes newspapers niggers night Ovington petition Phillips County plantation planters prisoners prosecution racial reel reported Scipio Africanus Jones Scipio Jones sharecroppers Sheriff shooting shot Smiddy soldiers South Southern story T. K. Jones Taft Tappan testify tion told town trial U. S. Bratton U.S. Supreme Court UALR union Walter White Ware Wells-Barnett whipped who'd Wordlow wrote