They Stole Him Out of Jail

They Stole Him Out of Jail PDF Author: William B. Gravely
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611179386
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Get Book

Book Description
“Reminds readers that the history of lynching and racial violence in the United States is not a closed book, but an ever-relevant story.” —Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books Before daybreak on February 17, 1947, twenty-four-year-old Willie Earle, an African American man arrested for the murder of a Greenville, South Carolina, taxi driver named T. W. Brown, was abducted from his jail cell by a mob, and then beaten, stabbed, and shot to death. An investigation produced thirty-one suspects, most of them cabbies seeking revenge for one of their own. The police and FBI obtained twenty-six confessions, but, after a nine-day trial in May that attracted national press attention, the defendants were acquitted by an all-white jury. In They Stole Him Out of Jail, William B. Gravely presents the most comprehensive account of the Earle lynching ever written, exploring it from background to aftermath and from multiple perspectives. Among his sources are contemporary press accounts (there was no trial transcript), extensive interviews and archival documents, and the “Greenville notebook” kept by Rebecca West, the well-known British writer who covered the trial for the New Yorker magazine. Gravely meticulously recreates the case’s details, analyzing the flaws in the investigation and prosecution that led in part to the acquittals. Vivid portraits emerge of key figures in the story, including both Earle and Brown, Solicitor Robert T. Ashmore, Governor Strom Thurmond, and West, whose article “Opera in Greenville” is masterful journalism but marred by errors owing to her short stay in the area. Gravely also probes problems with memory that resulted in varying interpretations of Willie Earle’s character and conflicting narratives about the lynching itself.

They Stole Him Out of Jail

They Stole Him Out of Jail PDF Author: William B. Gravely
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611179386
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Get Book

Book Description
“Reminds readers that the history of lynching and racial violence in the United States is not a closed book, but an ever-relevant story.” —Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books Before daybreak on February 17, 1947, twenty-four-year-old Willie Earle, an African American man arrested for the murder of a Greenville, South Carolina, taxi driver named T. W. Brown, was abducted from his jail cell by a mob, and then beaten, stabbed, and shot to death. An investigation produced thirty-one suspects, most of them cabbies seeking revenge for one of their own. The police and FBI obtained twenty-six confessions, but, after a nine-day trial in May that attracted national press attention, the defendants were acquitted by an all-white jury. In They Stole Him Out of Jail, William B. Gravely presents the most comprehensive account of the Earle lynching ever written, exploring it from background to aftermath and from multiple perspectives. Among his sources are contemporary press accounts (there was no trial transcript), extensive interviews and archival documents, and the “Greenville notebook” kept by Rebecca West, the well-known British writer who covered the trial for the New Yorker magazine. Gravely meticulously recreates the case’s details, analyzing the flaws in the investigation and prosecution that led in part to the acquittals. Vivid portraits emerge of key figures in the story, including both Earle and Brown, Solicitor Robert T. Ashmore, Governor Strom Thurmond, and West, whose article “Opera in Greenville” is masterful journalism but marred by errors owing to her short stay in the area. Gravely also probes problems with memory that resulted in varying interpretations of Willie Earle’s character and conflicting narratives about the lynching itself.

Who Lynched Willie Earle?

Who Lynched Willie Earle? PDF Author: William H. Willimon
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781501832512
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 138

Get Book

Book Description
Pastors and leaders long to speak an effective biblical word into the contemporary social crisis of racial violence and black pain. They need a no-nonsense strategy rooted in actual ecclesial life, illuminated in this fine book by a trustworthy guide, Will Willimon, who uses the true story of pastor Hawley Lynn's March of 1947 sermon, "Who Lynched Willie Earle?" as an opportunity to respond to the last lynching in Greenville, South Carolina and its implications for a more faithful proclamation of the Gospel today. By hearing black pain, naming white complicity, critiquing American exceptionalism/civil religion, inviting/challenging the church to respond, and attending to the voices of African American pastors and leaders, this book helps pastors of white, mainline Protestant churches preach effectively in situations of racial violence and dis-ease.

They Stole Him Out of Jail

They Stole Him Out of Jail PDF Author: William Gravely
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781611179378
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
"Over the last quarter century, a surge in scholarship about lynching in the United States coincided with a discussion by professional historians about why the topic had long suffered from neglect. New research has made possible a more complete picture of South Carolina's lynching history. The first major study, Terence Finnegan's 1993 dissertation, compared lynching in South Carolina and Mississippi. In 2006 John Hammond Moore set lynching in the state alongside murder and dueling over four decades after 1880. Two years later a Pickens County native and professor in an English university, Bruce Baker, used a case-study approach to compare seven lynchings in the two Carolinas from Reconstruction to 1930. All have drawn upon the earlier research of two master's students who surveyed twentieth-century in-state lynchings"--

Who Lynched Willie Earle?

Who Lynched Willie Earle? PDF Author: William H. Willimon
Publisher: Abingdon Press
ISBN: 1501832522
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Get Book

Book Description
Pastors and leaders long to speak an effective biblical word into the contemporary social crisis of racial violence and black pain. They need a no-nonsense strategy rooted in actual ecclesial life, illuminated in this fine book by a trustworthy guide, Will Willimon, who uses the true story of pastor Hawley Lynn’s March of 1947 sermon, “Who Lynched Willie Earle?” as an opportunity to respond to the last lynching in Greenville, South Carolina and its implications for a more faithful proclamation of the Gospel today. By hearing black pain, naming white complicity, critiquing American exceptionalism/civil religion, inviting/challenging the church to respond, and attending to the voices of African American pastors and leaders, this book helps pastors of white, mainline Protestant churches preach effectively in situations of racial violence and dis-ease.

Murder on Shades Mountain

Murder on Shades Mountain PDF Author: Melanie S. Morrison
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822371677
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book

Book Description
One August night in 1931, on a secluded mountain ridge overlooking Birmingham, Alabama, three young white women were brutally attacked. The sole survivor, Nell Williams, age eighteen, said a black man had held the women captive for four hours before shooting them and disappearing into the woods. That same night, a reign of terror was unleashed on Birmingham's black community: black businesses were set ablaze, posses of armed white men roamed the streets, and dozens of black men were arrested in the largest manhunt in Jefferson County history. Weeks later, Nell identified Willie Peterson as the attacker who killed her sister Augusta and their friend Jennie Wood. With the exception of being black, Peterson bore little resemblance to the description Nell gave the police. An all-white jury convicted Peterson of murder and sentenced him to death. In Murder on Shades Mountain Melanie S. Morrison tells the gripping and tragic story of the attack and its aftermath—events that shook Birmingham to its core. Having first heard the story from her father—who dated Nell's youngest sister when he was a teenager—Morrison scoured the historical archives and documented the black-led campaigns that sought to overturn Peterson's unjust conviction, spearheaded by the NAACP and the Communist Party. The travesty of justice suffered by Peterson reveals how the judicial system could function as a lynch mob in the Jim Crow South. Murder on Shades Mountain also sheds new light on the struggle for justice in Depression-era Birmingham. This riveting narrative is a testament to the courageous predecessors of present-day movements that demand an end to racial profiling, police brutality, and the criminalization of black men.

--a Man Lynched in Inhuman Lawlessness

--a Man Lynched in Inhuman Lawlessness PDF Author: Hawley Lynn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Lynching
Languages : en
Pages : 10

Get Book

Book Description


Haunted Greenville, South Carolina

Haunted Greenville, South Carolina PDF Author: Jason Profit
Publisher: History Press
ISBN: 9781609493219
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
Rumor has it that water--still or flowing--is a medium for paranormal activity. Residents of Greenville, South Carolina, have gathered at Falls Park on the river for generations, so it is no coincidence that this upstate city is teeming with spirits whose stories have yet to be told. From the aggressive spirits trapped in the 1920s grandeur of the Westin Poinsett Hotel to the moans of the wrongly accused Willie Earle, these ghosts have unfinished business. Watch as phantoms of children drift through the rows of Springwood Cemetery and discover what lurks behind the Tiffany stained-glass hallways of the Gassaway Mansion, as paranormalist and owner of Greenville Ghost Tours Jason Profit guides readers through the chilling past of this historic city with an entertaining collection of tales.

One Life to Give

One Life to Give PDF Author: John Fanestil
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
ISBN: 1506474144
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book

Book Description
One Life to Give explores martyrdom from its classical and Christian origins to the onset of the Revolutionary War. Fanestil shows how martyrdom animated many personal commitments to American independence, and thereby to the war. Understanding the role of martyrdom helps the reader grasp the origins of the American Revolution.

Hanging Bridge

Hanging Bridge PDF Author: Jason Morgan Ward
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199376565
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Get Book

Book Description
"Even at the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, when the clarion call for equality and justice echoed around the country, few volunteers ventured into Clarke County, Mississippi. Fewer still remained. Located just south of Neshoba County, where three civil rights workers had been murdered during 1964's Freedom Summer, Clarke lay squarely in what many considered Mississippi's, and thus America's, meanest corner ... Ward ... traces a legacy of violence that reflects the American experience of race, from the depths of Jim Crow through to the growing power of the NAACP and national awareness of what was taking places even in the country's bleakest racial landscapes"--

Anxious to Talk About It

Anxious to Talk About It PDF Author: Carolyn B. Helsel
Publisher: Chalice Press
ISBN: 9780827200722
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
"Wait... We're talking about what? I'm not so sure I want to do that." When it comes to discussing racism, many white people are overwhelmed with anxiety, leading to a fight-or-flight response. In Anxious to Talk About It, pastor and professor Carolyn B. Helsel draws on her successful experiences with white congregations to offer us tools to embrace and explore these anxious feelings. Through the sharing of our stories, new insights on racial identity, and spiritual practices to help you engage racial justice concerns prayerfully, you'll begin to overcome your anxiety and learn to join conversations with less fear, more compassion, and more knowledge of self, others, and the important issues at stake. Helsel's words and guidance will inspire you to receive the gifts that come through these difficult conversations and point to how you can get further involved in the important work around race relations. While Anxious to Talk About It can be read alone, reading it with a group is strongly recommended to help deepen and broaden the discussion, integrate the material and practice with others. Free Study Guide available at www.chalicepress.com.