An engrossing true-crime narrative and a pertinent reminder of the consequences of organized hatred.
A powerful account of how a Ku Klux Klan–sanctioned lynching in Mobile, Alabama, paved the way for legal victories against such hate groups.
Prolific journalist Leamer (The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption, 2013, etc.) ably re-creates this ugly flash point within a sprawling narrative about race relations and white supremacy’s gradual weakening, noting that even after the victories and bitterness of the 1960s, “the Klan had what appeared to be a legitimate place in Mobile life.” In 1981, young Klansmen randomly murdered 19-year-old African-American Michael Donald in retaliation for an unrelated shooting. After an initially botched investigation, the FBI and Justice Department oversaw the killers’ 1983 convictions. The prosecution attracted the attention of Southern Poverty Law Center founder Morris Dees, who then represented Donald’s family in a civil action against the United Klans of America, whose leaders first regarded it as “an aggravating, foolish lawsuit.” In the middle third of the book, Leamer uses Dees’ life as a lens, his growing devotion to legal activism contrasting with the massive resistance to civil rights embodied by his one-time mentor George Wallace, another key figure. While Dees was revolted by the Klan’s violence, writes the author, “for Wallace…race was simply a fantastic political issue that he intended to parlay as far as it would go.” By the time of the Donald murder, the Klan seemed diminished, yet Dees still faced threats as he built a case. Leamer develops incremental, disturbing portraits of the Klansmen, terming them “less a militant militia of white supremacist storm troopers than…a motley, disparate assembly of marginal men.” Concluding with a well-paced courtroom drama, the author captures the climactic improbability of Dees’ success, which bankrupted the UKA. Leamer confidently untangles the legal and social aspects of the story, showing how the South has grappled with the horrific legacy Donald’s murder represents.
An engrossing true-crime narrative and a pertinent reminder of the consequences of organized hatred.Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-245834-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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