A powerful novel about race, class, sex, and a lie that refused to die. Alabama, 1931. A posse stops a freight train and arrests nine black youths. Their crime: fighting with white boys. Then two white girls emerge from another freight car, and fast as anyone can say Jim Crow, the cry of rape goes up. One of the girls sticks to her story. The other changes her tune, again and again. A young journalist, whose only connection to the incident is her overheated social conscience, fights to save the nine youths from the electric chair, redeem the girl who repents her lie, and make amends for her own past. Intertwining historical actors and fictional characters, stirring racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism into an explosive brew, Scottsboro is a novel of a shocking injustice that convulsed the nation and reverberated around the world, destroyed lives, forged careers, and brought out the worst and the best in the men and women who fought for the cause.
A unique graphic history of one of the most controversial legal decisions of all time—with 118 powerful linoleum prints In 1931, nine black youths were falsely accused of raping two white women on a freight train traveling through northern Alabama. They were arrested and tried in four days, convicted of rape, and eight of them were sentenced to death. The ensuing legal battle spanned six years and involved two landmark decisions by the Supreme Court. One of the most well known and controversial legal decisions of our time, the Scottsboro case ignited the collective emotions of the country, which was still struggling to come to terms with fundamental issues of racial equality. Scottsboro, Alabama, which consists of 118 exceptionally powerful linoleum prints, provides a unique graphic history of one of the most infamous, racially-charged episodes in the annals of the American judicial system, and of the racial and class struggle of the time. Originally printed in Seattle in 1935, this hitherto unknown document, of which no other known copies exist, is presented here for the first time. It includes a foreword by Robin D.G. Kelley and an introduction by Andrew H. Lee. Mr. Lee discovered the book as part of a gift to the Tamiment Library by the family of Joe North, an important figure in the Communist Party-USA, and an editor at the seminal left-wing journal, the New Masses. A true historical find and an excellent tool for teaching the case itself and the period which it so indelibly marked, this book allows us to see the Scottsboro case through a unique and highly provocative lens.
This chilling and harrowing account tells the story of the Scottsboro Boys, nine African-American teenagers who, when riding the rails during the Great Depression, found their lives destroyed after two white women falsely accused them of rape. Award-winning author Larry Dane Brimner explains how it took more than eighty years for their wrongful convictions to be overturned. In 1931, nine teenagers were arrested as they traveled on a train through Scottsboro, Alabama. The youngest was thirteen, and all had been hoping to find something better at the end of their journey. But they never arrived. Instead, two white women falsely accused them of rape. The effects were catastrophic for the young men, who came to be known as the Scottsboro Boys. Being accused of raping a white woman in the Jim Crow south almost certainly meant death, either by a lynch mob or the electric chair. The Scottsboro boys found themselves facing one prejudiced trial after another, in one of the worst miscarriages of justice in U.S. history. They also faced a racist legal system, all-white juries, and the death penalty. Noted Sibert Medalist Larry Dane Brimner uncovers how the Scottsboro Boys spent years in Alabama's prison system, enduring inhumane conditions and torture. The extensive back matter includes an author's note, bibliography, index, and further resources and source notes.
Examines the individuals and the issues involved in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case which affirmed the right of an accused person to effective legal representation.
"Masterful. Magnificent. A passionate story of survival and a real page turner. This story will stay with me for a long time." —Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka's Journey Living through World War II working in a Paris bookstore with her young daughter, Vivi, and fighting for her life, Charlotte is no victim, she is a survivor. But can she survive the next chapter of her life? Alternating between wartime Paris and 1950s New York publishing, Ellen Feldman's Paris Never Leaves You is an extraordinary story of resilience, love, and impossible choices, exploring how survival never comes without a cost. The war is over, but the past is never past.
In CIA parlance, those who knew were “witting.” Everyone else was among the “unwitting.” On a bright November day in 1963, President Kennedy is shot. That same day, Nell Benjamin receives a phone call with news about her husband, the influential young editor of a literary magazine. As the nation mourns its public loss, Nell has her private grief to reckon with, as well as a revelation about Charlie that turns her understanding of her marriage on its head, along with the world she thought she knew. With the Cold War looming ominously over the lives of American citizens in a battle of the Free World against the Communist powers, the blurry lines between what is true, what is good, and what is right tangle with issues of loyalty and love. As the truths Nell discovers about her beloved husband upend the narrative of her life, she must question her own allegiance: to her career as a journalist, to her country, but most of all to the people she loves. Set in the literary Manhattan of the 1950s, at a journal much like the Paris Review, The Unwitting evokes a bygone era of burgeoning sexual awareness and intrigue and an exuberance of ideas that had the power to change the world. Resonant, illuminating, and utterly absorbing, The Unwitting is about the lies we tell, the secrets we keep, and the power of love in the face of both. Praise for The Unwitting “Much of the fun comes from the literary cameos (think: Mary McCarthy, Richard Wright and Robert Lowell), but it’s [Ellen Feldman’s] haunting portrait of a marriage that make this Cold War novel so resonant for readers of any time period, including our own.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “The first notable thing about this book is the narrator’s voice: it is snappish, confident, argumentative, literate. I fell for it from the beginning. . . . The Unwitting is vibrant, sassy, informative, a page-turner, absorbing, and swift. I am a woman, so maybe it is a women’s book, but I seriously doubt it, and hope that male readers will give it a shot. Surely they too will appreciate the research that went into it. Surely they too will be fascinated by its bold and thorough review of the American twentieth century.”—Kelly Cherry, The Los Angeles Review of Books “Compelling enough to take its place with the best of crime fiction, Feldman’s language is loving, bright and sharp while her storytelling abilities are unquestionable. . . . The Unwitting cuts us into an interesting time, then ramps things up. . . . Feldman is clearly a writer who is going places, [and] The Unwitting brings that home: it’s a terrific book.”—January Magazine “A story of love and intrigue during the Cold War, The Unwitting plumbs not only the secrets of spies, but those of the human heart. Moving, witty, and thoroughly intelligent, it is an absorbing and deeply satisfying read.”—Kevin Baker, author of The Big Crowd “Unforgettable . . . The Unwitting compelled me from the first page and through every unexpected twist and turn. This look into the dark places in human nature cries out to be read, re-ead, and discussed.”—Lynn Cullen, author of the national bestseller Mrs. Poe “Through the lens of a passionate, complex marriage, Ellen Feldman brings the Cold War back to life. The Unwitting is a wise and irresistible portrait of fascinating people in a tumultuous time.”—Roger Straus III, former managing director, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
"John Marshall (1755-1835) was a good son, a kind older brother, a loving father and husband, and a dear friend to many. He was a soldier for the Revolutionary Army, a successful lawyer, a congressman, and Secretary of State. Most importantly, he was Chief Justice of the United States. As Chief Justice, John Marshall made the Supreme Court the strong and powerful body it is today."--Back cover.
**Finalist for the Western Writers of America’s 2020 Spur Awards for Historical Novel** **Finalist for the 2019 Association for Mormon Letters Awards for Novel** “Compelling historical fiction…. Part love story, part religious explication, part mystery….A journey you won’t forget.”—Houston Chronicle In the inhospitable lands of the Utah Territory, during the winter of 1888, thirty-seven-year-old Deborah Tyler waits for her husband, Samuel, to return home from his travels as a wheelwright. It is now the depths of winter, Samuel is weeks overdue, and Deborah is getting worried. Deborah lives in Junction, a tiny town of seven Mormon families scattered along the floor of a canyon, and she earns her living by tending orchards and making work gloves. Isolated by the red-rock cliffs that surround the town, she and her neighbors live apart from the outside world, even regarded with suspicion by the Mormon faithful who question the depth of their belief. When a desperate stranger who is pursued by a Federal Marshal shows up on her doorstep seeking refuge, it sets in motion a chain of events that will turn her life upside down. The man, a devout Mormon, is on the run from the US government, which has ruled the practice of polygamy to be a felony. Although Deborah is not devout and doesn’t subscribe to polygamy, she is distrustful of non-Mormons with their long tradition of persecuting believers of her wider faith. But all is not what it seems, and when the Marshal is critically injured, Deborah and her husband’s best friend, Nels Anderson, are faced with life and death decisions that question their faith, humanity, and both of their futures.
In From the Tricontinental to the Global South Anne Garland Mahler traces the history and intellectual legacy of the understudied global justice movement called the Tricontinental—an alliance of liberation struggles from eighty-two countries, founded in Havana in 1966. Focusing on racial violence and inequality, the Tricontinental's critique of global capitalist exploitation has influenced historical radical thought, contemporary social movements such as the World Social Forum and Black Lives Matter, and a Global South political imaginary. The movement's discourse, which circulated in four languages, also found its way into radical artistic practices, like Cuban revolutionary film and Nuyorican literature. While recent social movements have revived Tricontinentalism's ideologies and aesthetics, they have largely abandoned its roots in black internationalism and its contribution to a global struggle for racial justice. In response to this fractured appropriation of Tricontinentalism, Mahler ultimately argues that a renewed engagement with black internationalist thought could be vital to the future of transnational political resistance.
