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
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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