A Shot in the Moonlight: How a Freed Slave and a Confederate Soldier Fought tor Justice in the Jim Crow South by Ben Montgomery

"With these facts I made my way home, thoroughly convinced that a Negro's life is a very cheap thing."`~from A Shot in the Moonlight

 

Several years ago I went to a local church to hear a Metro Detroit fiber artist talk about her quilt. The quilt was huge, a stark black with thousands of names embroidered on it. 

April Anue, the artist, told us how God hounded her to make this quilt, and what it cost her, the anguish and tears that accompanied every name she embroidered. She talked about the horror of making the nooses that ornament the quilt.

The 5,ooo names on the quilt are those of African Americans who had been lynched in America between 1865 and 1965. The title of the quilt is Strange Fruit.

Strange Fruit by April Anue

Five thousand human beings, beaten, tortured, and murdered. Anue researched every name, now memorialized for all to read.

In the Jim Crow South there were black Americans who were harassed, beaten, their homes and livelihoods taken from them, their families traumatized; they were denied protection under the law by the authorities and the courts. How many tens of thousands have been forgotten, their names lost?

Ben Montgomery has brought one man back to life. A freed slave whose white neighbors gathered on moonlit night to demand he leave his hard-earned, modest home and farm. Twenty-five men who claimed to be 'friends.' A man who disguised his voice and wore a handkerchief to hide his identity called to him to come out of his home. When this black man had the audacity not to comply, shots bombarded his home, wounding him. And to protect his home and family, this man shot out his window into the crowd, killing a white man.

His name was George Dinning. He fled into the fields to hide as the white men took their fallen comrade away. The next morning, Dinning's house and barn were burned to the ground. George turned himself into the authorities when he heard that he had killed a man.

The story of that night, Dinning's trial, and what happened afterwards is devastating and moving. And, it is perplexing, for the story of Dinning protecting the sanctity of his home brought a surge of support, including that of a prominent veteran of the Confederate Army who built memorials to Confederate heroes while supporting organizations to benefit freed slaves. He was "foremost in work of charity among our race," one black minister said. 

A Shot in the Moonlight  incorporates historic documents in a vivid recreation of the events of that night, the trial, and the unexpected twists of fortune afterward. Dinning stood up to power in the courtroom, asking for reparation for his loss. Everything was stacked against him, and when he was denied justice, a deluge of editorials were printed in his defense.

In his book What Unites Us, Dan Rather talks about building consensus on the shared values we all hold dear. The sanctity of home and a man's right to protect his home and family raised sympathy of for Dinning, for every American could sympathize with protecting one's home and family.   

This is an amazing story of a brave man, a horrendous tale of hate and racism, and a revelation of race relations in America that brought chills and tears. 

I received a free book from Little, Brown Spark. My review is fair and unbiased.

I previous read Montgomery's book The Man Who Walked Backwards: An American Dreamer's Search for Meaning in the Great Depression, which I reviewed here.

A Shot in the Moonlight: How a Freed Slave and a Confederate Soldier Fought for Justice in the Jim Crow South
by Ben Montgomery

Publication January 26, 2021
ISBN-13: 9780316535540 hardcover USD: $28/CAD: $35
ISBN-13: 9780316535564 ebook USD: $14.99 /CAD: $19.99

from the publisher

The sensational true story of George Dinning, a freed slave, who in 1899 joined forces with a Confederate war hero in search of justice in the Jim Crow south. “Taut and tense. Inspiring and terrifying in its timelessness.”(Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad )

Named a most anticipated book of 2021 by O, The Oprah Magazine

Named a "must-read" by the Chicago Review of Books

One of CNN's most anticipated books of 2021 

After moonrise on the cold night of January 21, 1897, a mob of twenty-five white men gathered in a patch of woods near Big Road in southwestern Simpson County, Kentucky. Half carried rifles and shotguns, and a few tucked pistols in their pants. Their target was George Dinning, a freed slave who'd farmed peacefully in the area for 14 years, and who had been wrongfully accused of stealing livestock from a neighboring farm. When the mob began firing through the doors and windows of Dinning's home, he fired back in self-defense, shooting and killing the son of a wealthy Kentucky family.

So began one of the strangest legal episodes in American history — one that ended with Dinning becoming the first Black man in America to win damages after a wrongful murder conviction.

Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material, bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Ben Montgomery resurrects this dramatic but largely forgotten story, and the unusual convergence of characters — among them a Confederate war hero-turned-lawyer named Bennett H. Young, Kentucky governor William O'Connell Bradley, and George Dinning himself — that allowed this unlikely story of justice to unfold in a time and place where justice was all too rare.

About the author

Ben Montgomery is author of the New York Times-bestselling 'Grandma Gatewood's Walk,' winner of a 2014 Outdoor Book Award, 'The Leper Spy,' and 'The Man Who Walked Backward,' coming fall 2018 from Little, Brown & Co. He spent most of his 20 year newspaper career as an enterprise reporter for the Tampa Bay Times. He founded the narrative journalism website Gangrey.com and helped launch the Auburn Chautauqua, a Southern writers collective.

In 2010, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in local reporting and won the Dart Award and Casey Medal for a series called "For Their Own Good," about abuse at Florida's oldest reform school. In 2018, he won a National Headliner award for journalistic innovation for a project exploring police shootings in Florida. He was among the first fellows for Images and Voices of Hope in 2015 and was selected to be the fall 2018 T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor at the University of Montana in Missoula.

Montgomery grew up in Oklahoma and studied journalism at Arkansas Tech University, where he played defensive back for the football team, the Wonder Boys. He worked for the Courier in Russellville, Ark., the Standard-Times in San Angelo, Texas, the Times Herald-Record in New York's Hudson River Valley and the Tampa Tribune before joining the Times in 2006. He lives in Tampa. 

A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler

Foreshadowing began with the opening sentences, narrated in a voice that brought to mind Rod Serling introducing a Twilight Zone episode, setting up the story.

A girl sitting beside a swimming pool behind her newly built home. The neighbor boy welcoming her to the neighborhood. A typical day in a typical good neighborhood, upscale and friendly, a place where women gather for book clubs and teenagers can safely run in the local park.

But underneath the 'tenuous peace' simmers the possibility of fracture, the conflict of class and money and race and values. For some, conspicuous wealth is the goal. For another, environmental concerns are primary.

And probing deeper, there are secret desires and blooming love and the blindness we hold on to for self-protection.

Lives will be destroyed.

"No. Yes. Of course. I am going to be a good neighbor."~from A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler

Xavier was good looking, a National Honor Student. He had won a scholarship to study classical guitar. He was also biracial. His white father died tragically. His mother Valerie was a professor whose hobby was more than 'gardening', it was environmental restoration and preservation. She was especially proud of the towering oak tree in her back yard.

The oak tree whose roots had been harmed when the house behind was torn down and replaced with a showcase McMansion.

New girl Juniper never knew her dad. Her mom Julia struggled before she lucked out, catching the attention of a self-made man with a lucrative business. Brad Whitman set 'his girls' up in a sweet deal of a life. But Brad's easy-going charm hid his motivation of self-interest and sick obsessions.

Valerie includes Julia into the neighborhood while Xavier and Juniper discover friendship is turning into something more.

Valerie cannot allow development to destroy the environment--she must make a stand and decides on a lawsuit. Juniper doubts the Purity Pledge her parents shepherded her into taking and secretly meets Xavier. She knows something is wrong with her dad's attentions but Brad justifies his obsession and plots ways to take action.

I will tell you this: the culmination will make you shudder and you will cry.

A Good Neighborhood is a reflection of the social turmoil of our time.

I had to consider my own 'good neighborhood,' a two-square-mile city highly rated on lists, with quick selling properties, a safe neighborhood. A predominately white neighborhood with a small demographic of foreigners and split in half politically. A city that voted out a mayor who used tax money to dig up dirt on her opponent and fired long-time city workers who would not cooperate with her plans.

And yet...every tree-lined avenue may shade secrets.

I received access to a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Read an excerpt here.

A Good Neighborhood
by Therese Anne Fowler
St. Martin's Press
Pub Date 10 Mar 2020 
ISBN 9781250237279
PRICE $27.99 (USD)

All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin: A Mother's Crisis of Values, Familial Ties, and Sympathetic Understanding

"Finch is either completely innocent or a total sociopath. He's either more like his mother or exactly like his father. I have no clue which one it is, but I will find out." from All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin

There is a reason that Emily Giffin's novel All We Ever Wanted is on the bestseller list immediately upon publication. She is a fine writer who delivers defined characters caught in a complicated knot of the "he said, she said" variety, and rolls out the plot so the reader is hooked and, as the story progresses, can't resist being sucked into the current of ever-deepening revelations.

She incorporates issues of #Me Too, class, and race into the central story, along with youth issues of social media and peer pressure, so the novel feels relevant.

The plot revolves around Finch Bowning, just accepted into Princeton, whose family is extremely wealthy. His mother Nina came from modest roots, while his father Kirk was from one of Nashville's elite even before he became even wealthier. They seem to have everything.

Then there is Lyla, raised by her single father Tom. Lyla is on scholarship at a private school where kids like Finch are clearly from another world.

Then at a party one night, a photograph is taken and circulated, bringing crisis into all their lives.

Nina's own experience offers her insight into Lyla's situation and she wants justice for Lyla. Nina must consider the values her husband has brought into their family, where money is more important than people and anything can be bought. She is forced to evaluate her entire life as she seeks to walk the fine line between what is right and the bonds of family.

I had not read Giffin before and was very pleased with this book.

I won an ARC through LibraryThing.

Read an excerpt at
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/550983/all-we-ever-wanted-by-emily-giffin/9780399178924/

All We Ever Wanted
Emily Giffin
Hardcover | $28.00
Published by Ballantine Books
Publication June 26, 2018
ISBN 9780399178924

A Boy in His Winter by Norman Lock

In the year 2077 Huck Finn reflects back on his life, beginning in 1835 when he and the escaped slave Jim began their raft journey down the Mississippi River. Somehow they became time travelers until Hurricane Katrina shipwrecked Huck back into passing time.

Along the way, they saw America caught in wars, the marvel of electric lighting, and how racism kept its grip on society.

Jim got off the raft in 1960, finding a lynch mob waiting for him. In 2005 Huck meets James, who tries to keep him from harm. As an adult, Huck falls in love with Jameson, who becomes his wife. She writes a novel, The Boy In His Winter. Like Jim, James and Jameson are African American.

What Huck realizes from his vantage point of 85 years is how badly he treated Jim, how he accepted his society's values unthinking, diminishing Jim as a person and as a friend.

"I was bothered that I had come to hate him, bothered even more that I had loved him. I'm not sure that I regarded him then as a man. Not entirely. That broad view of humanity was alien to a mind that had been formed haphazardly, like a shack put together out of old lumber, warped and ill-used.(...)We'd wasted much time when we might have understood what was happening on the raft while we were close in on the river's end, which as not to be the journey's end, as I learned later." Huck Finn, A Boy in His Winter

At the end of his life, Huck returns to his hometown to play act Mark Twain, telling his own life stories. Huck calls his story a comedy, having seen enough for 'three or four lifetimes."

"Haven't you learned by now how fantastic a business it is to be alive?"-Huck Finn, A Boy in His Winter

The novel is episodic, meandering as the Mississippi River, but I was charmed by Huck's narrative, although there is nothing of innocence to be found. Huck is deformed by societal values, pursuing wealth and conspicuous consumption as an adult as thoughtlessly as he accepted slavery in his youth. With a broad overview of American history distilled into one lifetime, and grappling with memory and how the past is altered with our storytelling of it, Huck's tale shows the darkness behind what we remember as Twain's story of boyish freedom.

I received a book from the publisher as part of a LibraryThing giveaway.

The Boy in His Winter
Norman Lock
Bellevue Literary Press
$14.95
ISBN: 978-1-934137-76-5

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Shaker Heights, Ohio, is a subdivision built on order where well off families live the American dream: good jobs, home ownership, well-ordered lives, and gifted kids earmarked for prestigious universities. It seems the community channels the original Shaker settlers, being a "patch of heaven on earth, a refuge from the world," a utopia based on harmony and order.

The Richardson family, a defense attorney father and journalist mother with two sons and two daughters, appear to be the ideal family. Mrs. Richardson inherited a house which she lets for low rent, a "form of charity" for the deserving poor.

Itinerant artist Mia Warren and her teenaged daughter Pearl move into the rented home. Pearl has been promised their frequent moves are over. For the first time she has to care what her peers think of her; she's in for the long haul.

"They dazzled her, these Richardsons..."

Moody Richardson befriends Pearl, who is like no one he's ever met before. Pearl is enchanted with the Richardson family and spends her free time with them. She has a crush on the eldest boy Trip and learns fashion from Lexie. Izzy is the family misfit, born to 'push buttons,' an original thinker who won't fit in, but who finds a kindred spirit in the free thinking Mia.

Things get complicated when sexual liaisons arise. One results in an unplanned pregnancy.

Meanwhile, Mr. Richardson is defending a Shaker Heights couple in a legal battle over the Chinese American child they are adopting when the birth mother tries to get her baby back.

"I mean, we're lucky. No one sees race here.""Everyone sees race, Lex," said Moody. "The only difference is who pretends not to."

The local art gallery has an exhibit of photography. Mia is clearly in one of the portraits. Mrs. Richardson puts her reporter skills to work to find out who this Mia really is and what she has been running from.

There is so much going on in this novel: Racism; the question of who 'real' mothers are (Biological? Adopted? Spiritual?); the discrepancy between what a child needs and what it is believed they need; choices of conformity and self-realization.

It is a joy to read, the characters so unique and vivid, their story lines so delightfully intertwined. There are enough ideas and insights into American life to keep a book club going for several sessions. But the book reads like butter, quick and easy and sweet.

Celeste Ng's first book Everything I Never Told You was a huge critical and popular hit. In Little Fires Everywhere she will secure her place in reader's hearts, as well as her place as one of our best young writers.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Celeste Ng grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio, in a family of scientists. She attended Harvard University and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan (now the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan), where she won the Hopwood Award. Her fiction and essays have appeared in One Story, TriQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere, and she is the recipient of the Pushcart Prize. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and son.

Little Fires Everywhere
by Celeste Ng
Penguin Press
On Sale Date: September 12, 2017
ISBN 9780735224292, 0735224293
Hardcover |  352 pages
$27.00 USD, $36.00 CAD
Fiction / Literary

We Hope for Better Things: Detroit 1967

The summer I turned fifteen a neighbor girl and I stood in our street in Royal Oak, MI watching planes and helicopters flying overhead. They were carrying National Guard from Selfridge Airbase to Detroit.

My dad and his worried coworkers at the Chrysler plant in Highland Park left work early. My church was collecting food and blankets to distribute to people whose homes had been burned.

I heard strangers at the grocery store saying, 'kill them all.' Mom came home from coffee klatches with neighbors, fuming after being told "you don't know, you never lived with 'them'."

I was aware that five miles due south the world was very different from the one I lived in. My dad stopped at Woodward and McNichols to pick up his lab's African American janitor so he didn't have to walk from the bus stop to work. Mom visited a hospital roommate at her Detroit home, and returned ashamed of her working class 'wealth'. And, thanks to my teachers at Kimball High School, I understood the issues behind the riot: housing, jobs, poverty, racism, and dreams deferred.

from Detroit 1967, tank in Detroit

1967, the summer of the Detroit riot, began a descent into hell, ending with the following spring's assassinations of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Before I turned 16 my childhood version of America had been turned on its head, my faith in humanity challenged. I wrote in my diary, "I expect to see an ark any day now."

We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes. Detroit motto

Reading Detroit 1967 for me was important and often emotionally draining.

The Historical Context

The twenty essays follow the history of African Americans in Detroit, showing the deep roots of Detroit racism.

How many Metro Detroiters know the personages behind our street names--Livernois, Dequindre, Grosbeck, Campau, Cass, John R-- and that these men were slave owners?

Michigan became a 'free state' when it entered the Union in 1837. And yet, The Free Press, started in 1831 with investments by Joseph Campau and John R. Williams, opposed the freeing of the slaves and did not support Lincoln.

Detroit became a crossroads of fugitive slaves, slave catchers, and the Underground Railroad. Fugitive slaves arrived in numbers after the War of 1812. In 1833 there was a riot over runaway slaves. The Underground Railroad helped runaways cross the river to Canada. In 1863,"the bloodiest day that ever dawned upon Detroit," saw a pogrom against African Americans when a white woman falsely reported she was raped by a black man.

European immigrants competed with blacks for jobs and housing, another source for racial tension. And immigrants resented being drafted into the Civil War to fight for black freedom. "If we are got to be killed up for niggers then we will kill every nigger in this town," a rioter proclaimed.

Henry Ford became the largest employer of African Americans in the country, but housing was limited; a wall was even erected. The auto industry whose jobs drew Southern blacks and whites left Detroit for Hazel Park, Dearborn, and Macomb County.

The KKK and Black Legion were active in Detroit in the 1930s. In 1943 there was another Race Riot. "Urban Renewal' destroyed African American neighborhoods. After the 1967 riot the white population fled to the suburbs.

Where the 1967 riot began

The Riot

The 1967 Riot is considered from many vantages, with eye witness memoirs, a time line, commentaries after the event, and viewpoints from a historical perspective. The first-hand accounts of how the riot began were especially revealing. I also appreciated the detailed timeline of events.

I had not known of the controversy over calling the event a riot or a rebellion; it is contended that when white Europeans protested it was called a rebellion, but when African Americans rose up it was labeled a riot.

I was interested in learning about Detroit before we moved here in 1963, how the progressive policies of Jerome Cavanagh and his police commissioners were unable to change grass roots racism, the rebellion against Police Commissioner Hart's attempt to integrate the police cars, and the failure of "top-down reforms."

The later essays address Detroit's death and rebirth. Will all Detroiters be included in the progress?

Learning that I live in "one of the most fractured regions in the country, with more than 150 separate municipalities" that "encourage extreme balkanization" was disturbing. But it is true. In the 1960s I grew up in an all white city, and now 50 years later I live a few miles away in a city with a non-white population of only 11.6%. Oakland County has the highest employment rate and one of the highest median incomes in the country. I live in a bubble.

When I recently blogged about summer 1967 people shared their memories of the riot. Several were returning through Detroit from Canada and saw the fires, or were stopped and checked at the tunnel, worried about getting home. Some recalled tanks going down Woodward. People who worked downtown saw kids carrying things they had stolen or drove by cars on fire. All recalled being afraid the riot would spread out of Detroit and worried about friends living in the city.

Clearly, the summer of the riot was a pivotal event in our lives.

Reading Detroit 1967 helped me to understand the riot from the inside. I am concerned that the conditions that sparked it have not improved.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Detroit 1967: Origins, Impacts, Legacies
Thomas J. Sugrue, Joel Stone, et. al.
Wayne State University Press @WSUPress
Publication Date: June 5, 2017
$39.99 hard cover
ISBN: 9780814343036, 081434303

For more Detroit history I recommend,

Detroit Historical Museum- Detroit 1967 at http://www.detroit1967.org

One In A Great City by David Marianis, my review at
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2015/09/once-in-great-city-detroit-story-by.html

Terror in the City of Champions by Tom Stanton, my review at
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/06/murder-and-baseball-in-depression-era.html

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

I have been privileged and protected in my small life. I came from a working class family with no significant problems. I was able to find a college to accept my less than stellar grades. I married a man who went into the ministry. We had challenges but we had what we needed. No one in my family was ever in jail, no one was targeted because of color or religion.

I knew about the great faults in American society and my heart was in the right place. I spoke out when I could, boycotted, tried to be educated, tried to pattern the right behavior. But I had no idea of the depth of my ignorance until reading Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson.

The stories Stevenson shared crushed me, like a pressure on my chest. I read a chapter at a time, then had to step away and let the horror and despair subside. For Stevenson reveals an American justice system not only without mercy but that was corrupted on the local level for political gain.

In the 1980s, fear of rising crime was used by politicians who proposed stricter and harsher prison sentences, three-strike laws, and treating children as adults. As prisons filled to overcapacity, for-profit prisons arose and they lobbied for harsher sentences to keep their business profitable. The death penalty was reinvigorated, even if the methods employed were cruel and unreliable.

Caught in the cycle are innocent men and women, children relegated to life in prison where they are sexually abused, the mentally handicapped, and women who raped by men unpunished for their abuse of power.

Bryan Stevenson was drawn to seek justice for those on death row, especially the innocent without legal counsel. He started the Equal Justice Initiative and Just Mercy is the story of his work and the people he tried to help. It is a cry for reform of the justice and prison system. And a cry for mercy.

The book has won numerous awards and prizes. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times called it, "Searing, moving." It is a disturbing book to read, especially because upright citizens who demand punishment have little idea of who they are condemning and what they are condemning them to. We have instituted "vengeful and cruel punishments" justified by our own suffering. "But simply punishing the broken--walking away from them or hiding them from sight--only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity," Stevenson writes.

There is one story that brings hope. A prison guard who showed extreme racial prejudice learns more about the prisoner he has treated with contempt, and he could connect his experiences to the prisoner's. It changed the guard's mind and his life.

Stevenson is the mouthpiece for the stories of unjustly imprisoned men and women, allowing readers to understand their walk. May we learn compassion and press for a just system, showing mercy to those broken by racism, mental illness, poverty, addiction, abuse, and trauma.

As Stevenson reminds us, we are all broken people.

I received a free book from Blogging for Books in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Just Mercy
Bryan Stevenson
Spiegel & Grau
$16 paperback
ISN: 978-0-8129-8496-5

New Boy by Tracey Chevalier: Othello on the Playground

I looked forward to reading the Hogarth Shakespeare update of Othello by one of my favorite historical fiction authors, Tracey Chevalier.

Set in the 1970s, New Boy is the story of Osei Kokote, son of a diplomat from Ghana, newly arrived on the suburban Washington D.C. schoolyard. O, as he is called, soon finds that Dee, the most popular girl in school, chooses him to be her boyfriend. But Ian, the playground bully, sees his entire social hierarchy threatened by O's love conquest and kickball ability.

Racial stereotyping and prejudice simmers, unspoken but obvious in the teacher's attitudes. When teachers observe Dee and O touching each other's hair it only confirms their worst fears about the black boy.

Ian sets up a series of events to make O suspect his good fortune, bringing misery and physical harm.

Chevalier's playground society rings true to the character's age and time, and the Othello story becomes more chilling and disturbing played out by characters in an America divided by racism.

New Boy is a powerful book. It can stand on its own, but I hope it will be used to introduce young adult readers to Shakespeare's tragic play. I recommended it to my book club.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

New Boy
Tracey Chevalier
Hogarth
Publication May 16, 2017
$25 hardcover
ISBN: 9780553447637

Clyde Bellecourt Tells His Story as Founder of the American Indian Movement

After reading The Apache Wars and The Sand Creek Massacre I was ripe to learn about the Native American civil rights movement that occured while I was in my late teens and early twenties. As if on cue, Edelwiss offered The Thunder Before the Storm, The Autobiography of Clyde Bellencourt, the founder of the American Indian Movement.

"We started a movement to take back everything that belonged to us: our spirituality, our hunting and fishing rights, our water rights, our gold and minerals, our sacred rites--and our children."

Starting with his childhood on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, Clyde Bellecourt (his colonial name; The Thunder Before the Storm, Neegonnwayweedun, is his Ojibwe name) relates a grim story. Clyde grew up hearing his father's stories of being taken from his family to be educated in a boarding school so hateful that he enlisted during WWI. Later he discovered the origin of his mother's limp: at boarding school her punishment for speaking her native language was to scrub floors with bags of marbles tied to her knees.

Clyde grew up without knowledge of his native culture, spiritual traditions, or language, which had been violently supressed for generations by a Eurocentric majority culture. He was deemed "incorrigable," a truant and runaway, resistant to the mission school authority, repeatedly in juvenile detention, and in solitary confinement in prison. His life mirrored that of many Natives on the reservations, with high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse resulted in a typical lifespan of 44 years.

While in prison Clyde became part of an Indian cultural program and an Indian Folklore Group. He learned his native language, ceremonies, prayer songs, and history.

"I was typical of the other Indians there: spiritually and emotionally bankrupt."

It was the beginning of Bellecourt's spiritual revival that lead him to becoming an activist, using "confrontaion politics" to demand the end of discrimination on the local and national level. European education, organized religion, and the Bureaus of Indian Affairs were the institutions that needed to change. He became the leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM). The goals included addressing immediate concerns in housing, youth, employment, education, communication, and citizenship. The long range goals included unification of the Indian people, participation in local affairs, and fostering economic equality. Bellecourt brought back the Sun Dance which had been banned.

AIM found friends in civil rights workers including Coretta Scott King, religious leaders such as Dr. Paul Boe of the America Lutheran Church, and local political leaders along the way, but they were also targeted as 'terrorists' by local police, the FBI, and the American government. AIM was besieged, spys infiltrated the group, including assasins, and members were murdered.

Like many visionary leaders, Bellecourt is not a paragon of perfection; he struggled with demons-- alcohol, drugs, and infidelity; he was imprisoned on drug related charges; and he survived assasination attempts.

I was glad to read about Bellecourt's work to remove racism from American sports, particularly the National Football League and the Washington Redskins name. It helped me to understand the associations of this kind of branding from the Native American viewpoint. "Redskin" was used to "denigrate and dehumanize" the natives, who believe the term refers to the bloody scalps taken by  bounty hunters. The "tomahawk chop" to Native Americans is a reminder of the weapons used to scalp their people.

I consider how I grew up with cowboy and Indian TV westerns and movies, the cliches and easy stereotypes, racism in the form of entertainment. We kids didn't know about the drive to exterminate First Peoples, the lies and broken treaties, and the continued supression of Native culture that was still ongoing. I had a cowboy hat and a holster, squinting my eyes as if always looking into the sun, a little blond-haired girl imitating what she saw on tv.

At college a friend told me about going to Pow Wows and of his interest in the Indian ways. It just seemed like a fad. And while I was working my husband through school, barely in my twenties, Wounded Knee seemed far away and alien.

I have been spending a great deal of time, now in my 'golden years', making up for the ignorance of my youth. It is frustrating to know that the entertainment industry still forms most of young people's historical knowledge. I know--the goal of public education is to make good citizens, and somehow that means supporting the image that America was always right. But I think that making good citizens should include the understanding that America has committed heinous crimes, but that we are continually learning to see the error of our past choices. Right now I am afraid that we may not be learning, as a culture, to recall history and resist making the same mistakes.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Thunder Before the Storm: The Autobiography of Clyde Bellecourt as told to Jon Lurie
MNHS Press
Publication Novemeber 15, 2016
$27.95 hard cover
ISBN: 9781681340197

American Copper by Shann Ray

I won a copy of American Copper by Shann Ray from The Quivering Pen blog by David Abrams. When his review of the book posted, extolling the beauty of Ray's language, I set it on the To Be Read Next pile. Abrams wrote, "If I said just one book can, however briefly, change the way you look at both the natural world and human nature--if I said all that, you'd want to read this book, wouldn't you?"

American Copper is a story of racism and the evil in men, and it is a love story.

In the first decades of the 20th c, automobiles are seen in the Butte, Montana streets but rodeo competitions still run the circuit. Native Americans and Chinese are considered sub-human, and gangs are free to deal out punishments to those who step out of line. Copper has made immigrant Baron Josef Lowry not only rich but the most powerful man around, his arm reaching to Washington, D.C.  He is obsessed with wealth and controls everyone in his life, especially his son and daughter. After losing his wife he commands his children to never marry; he needs them he says, and he intends to pass his copper mines and wealth to their care.

His daughter Evelynne is given everything she physically needs. Her father teaches her about the natural world and gathers her poetry for publication back east. After her brother's death, Evelynne's grief turns her into a recluse. Reaching womanhood, Eve longs to escape her ivory tower and searches for a man strong enough, or audacious enough, to stand up to her father and take her away.

The evil that inhabits men, and the capacity for love is explored in eloquent prose.

I am glad to have read this book.

The book cover blurbs include the marvelous Andra Barrett, whose historical short stories in Ship Fever and Servants of the Map I adore, wrote, "This grave, unusual novel unfolds with a beautiful evenhandedness, balancing the outer world and inner life, Cheyenne and white experiences of early 20th-century Montana.  Ray's feel for the heart and soul of Montana and its people--all its people--graces every page."

And Dave Eggers, author of the memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and  A Hologram for a King, called the book "Lyrical, prophetic, brutal, yet ultimately hopeful."

Others compared this first novel's writing to Cormac McCarthy's Cities of the Plains.

American Copper
Shann Ray
Unbridled Press
ISBN: 978-1-60953-121-8

Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story by David Maraniss

My Detroit

In June of 1963 I was still ten years old when a van containing all my family's possessions moved across the open expanse of southern Ontario towards Detroit, MI. My family had sold the family business, a service and gas station in Tonawanda, NY, along with the only home I had ever known, a giant 1830s farm house surrounded by a Post-War Levittown community.

Detroit lured my Dad with hopes for a profitable job in the auto industry, with good benefits and a pension, a job without the physical stress of working outdoors in Buffalo winters.

My grandparents had moved to the Detroit suburbs in 1955 so I was familiar with the long, tedious car ride across Ontario, the dramatic and eerie drive through the Tunnel into Detroit, the sight of the impressive skyscrapers of the city, and the lights along the busy boulevard of Woodward Avenue.

Dad got a job at Chrysler in Highland Park that offered my family a working class lifestyle: school clothes from K-Mart, hamburgers at Peppy's, two cars, a home of our own. Medical insurance meant Mom could get the most up-to-date treatments at Henry Ford Hospital for her autoimmune disease.

Dad at work as an Experimental Mechanic at Chrysler

It was in Metro Detroit where I had many firsts: the tragic murder of President Kennedy, followed by those of  Rev. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy; my first mock election when I learned about LBJ and the Great Society; my first interest in 'pop' music, listening to Motown on a transistor radio tuned to CKLW; my first visit to the Detroit Institute of Arts; the 1967 riots; body counts on the news during Vietnam. The first car I knew by sight was the Mustang. We took trips to Belle Isle to watch the freighters go by and see the electric eel at the Aquarium, and to the Detroit Historical Museum, Greenfield Village, the Cranbrook Science Museum, the Detroit Zoo. My first ball game was at Tiger's Stadium.

Dad died seven years ago. He knew he had been lucky to have worked during the Golden Years of the auto industry, a time when a grease-monkey with a high school education could get a Union job and work overtime and make a good salary. His pension allowed my widowed Dad to do whatever he wanted in retirement: buy a cabin, be on the go, eat out.

Dad left me my family's home; it was not even ten years old when my folks purchased it in 1972, a modern ranch on 'Snob Hill'. It was a far cry from the Tonawanda house his family had moved to in 1935 with no heat on the second floor or indoor plumbing.

the realtor's photo of the house in 1972

It was Detroit that made my family's American Dream possible.

Once In A Great City

David Maraniss saw a commercial during the Super Bowl that brought a wave of nostalgia. It inspired him to write Once In A Great City. He focuses on Detroit in 1963, just after the Cuban Missle Crisis, to fall of 1964. It was a time when Detroit was 'on top of the world' with visionary leadership, record breaking profits for the Big Three, and Motown's stars on the rise. It was where President John F. Kennedy first spoke of 'ask not', and where Rev. Martin Luther King first had a dream, and where President Lyndon B. Johnson first spoke about a war on poverty. It is also when legislation to open housing for all persons failed, when Africa American landmarks were being torn down for parking lots, and Malcolm X called for revolution.

Walk to Freedom June 1963

I loved how Maraniss gives a complete picture of the city, story arcs that fitt together like a jigsaw puzzle to make a Big Picture.

Grinnell Brotheres sold pianos on time, and Cass Tech had great music teachers. Migrants from the South seeking factory jobs brought a rich musical heritage with them. Music flourished in Detroit, jazz and blues and Mowtown.

I had not known about Detroit's bid for the 1968 Olympics, championed by President Kennedy championed. What would have happened if they had won the Olympic bid? Would the 1967 riot still have occurred or would the city have been proactive about solving racial problems? Would things have been different?

Maraniss unravels the underlying roots of Detroit's undoing, evident even at its apex. In a few years riots precipitated white flight. The Walk to Freedom down Woodward Ave. led by Dr. Martin Luther King was eclipsed by racial tension. Foreign cars put America's large gas guzzlers out of business. (Reuther had argued for smaller cars; no one listened.) A Wayne State University report had warned that suburban growth would bode ill for the city. African Americans could not find housing and jobs equal to their education, and their communities were dismantled for 'progress.' Warning signs were dwarfed by the hubris of success.

Maraniss celebrates the heritage that Detroit has given us: a heritage of upward mobility, Motown music, Civil Rights, the Mustang.

1965 Ford Mustang fastback in front the Ford Pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair in New York.

This is an enlightening book. I felt nostalgia and recognition for a Detroit I hardly knew.

See Detroit, once a great city on Youtube here.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Once In A Great City
David Maraniss
Simon & Schuster
Publication Sept. 15, 2015
$32.50 hard cover
ISBN: 9781476748382

A Legacy of Racism: Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle

This past month I read Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle. In 1925 an African American doctor bought a house in an all-white Detroit neighborhood. At that time, the only housing available to people of color was in Black Bottom, a neighborhood built to house 5,000 people but by then holding 60,000. Dr. Ossian Sweet had seen a lynching as a boy, and knew about race riots that had erupted in towns across the US over racial integration of white neighborhoods. So Dr Sweet invited friends to his home for protection, and had purchased guns. As a 'new Negro,' he intended to fight for his rights and protect his family  if attacked.

When the KKK rallied the white neighborhood to protest, and the rocks started to hit the roof and break windows, one of the people in Sweet's house shot a gun. A bullet hit a young man and killed him. All 16 people in Sweet's house that night were arrested. The trial culminated with Clarence Darrow working for the defendants. When the jury could not agree, the defendants were tried separately. Dr Sweet's younger brother was first on trial, and was acquired and all suspects were released. Horribly, the time in jail exposed Dr. Sweet's wife to tuberculosis, and both her and their baby died of TB. Dr Sweet ended his own life.

The story is important, but the background information to explain the significance of the events in their historical context makes the events come alive. We learn what it meant to the white homeowners to have their house value drop. We also understand why Dr Sweet planned for his self-protection when he bought his wife's dream house. The NAACP leader, James Weldon Johnson, saw this case as pivotal and raised money for the defendants.

At the same time, I was reading a biography of Ella Baker. I had first read about Ella in "Freedom's Daughters," a wonderful book about the women behind the Civil Rights movement. That book had inspired my quilt, I Will Lift My Voice.

Ella attended college then moved to Harlem during its Renaissance. By 1930 she was involved in activist work, with a specialty in enabling people to start  grass roots movements. Ella was a whirlwind, traveling the country and connecting with people of all rank and file. I was quite overwhelmed by the details of her work history and all she accomplished.

Detroit remains one of the most segregated cities in America. It is amazing to think about. I grew up in the northern suburbs of Detroit.

I remember the 1968 race riots, and waiting for Dad to arrive home safely from the Highland Park factory where he worked. The rioting was reported to have high 8 Mile Road. We lived at 12 Mile. There was only fear in my world, no other repercussions. Neighbors voiced racial slurs. My mother stood up against racism. She was full of compassion and understood that the violence sprung from deep inequalities. She had made a friend while in treatment at Henry Ford Hospital, and had visited her in her home. The friend was black and lived in Detroit. Mom saw first hand the difference between her reality and our working class world in the 'burbs. Our 1920 home was modest, our clothing from K-Mart, but we were literally living in a different world.

I grew up thinking I was not prejudiced; I did not hate people of different color, religion or background. My ancestors did not own slaves (later proven by genealogical research). I was not responsible, and should not be classified with those 'other whites' who were bigots. But over time, I learned to understand that a moral man in an immoral society, who does not protest or work to change the status quo, is a participant and supporter of the immorality. I learned that prejudice is inescapable. And that it becomes a daily choice to do the right thing.

It is Lent, and yesterday in church we sang the hymn "Ah, Holy Jesus." Singing the words, we admit that we were participants in the death of Jesus. We all share the shame. In the end, that is how I have come to think about America's history of racism, prejudice, and racial violence. I cannot claim to be separate from that legacy. I must share the blame.