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Lädt ... He Calls Me By Lightning: The Life of Caliph Washington and the forgotten Saga of Jim Crow, Southern Justice, and the Death Penaltyvon S. Jonathan Bass
![]() Keine Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. It took me multiple tries to get through this book. Essentially it tries to do too much with too little. Caliph Washington is a passive character in his own story, which, while not his fault as he's trapped in jail, is made even more boring and slow by the narrative's meandering from one topic to another. There are too many points of focus, too many characters great and small, and just not enough heart and soul in any of it. I'm pretty disappointed, considering this book is very timely, as we watch Alabama once more try to implode itself (this time by choosing a pedophile) rather than allow progress. Overall slow, disjointed, and too wide a focus with far too much detail into legalese that is probably an interesting read to a law student but left this reader bored and skimming. Not a book on civil rights issues that I could recommend to anyone, which is disappointing because I think underneath the drudgery is a good study of ugly history and abuse. A little confusing at first, but a very detailed telling of arrest, conviction, and appeals of Caliph Washington. Bass includes tangential information such as prison construction, prison life, and electric chair executions, which can be distracting, but the information adds context to the story. The book includes a note on the archival research and records consulted in the writing of this book. Zeige 4 von 4 keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
" ... Reconstruction of the ... life of a wrongfully convicted man whose story becomes an historic portrait of the Jim Crow South"-- Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)305.8009761Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Groups of people Ethnic and national groups ; racism, multiculturalism General Biography And History North America South Central U.S.Klassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:![]()
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While a good part of the book stays focused on the story of Washington and his trials, at times the book loses that focus and drifts into long discussions of political figures and courts in the Bessemer and Birmingham, Alabama area, and those sections seemed to be an unnecessary distraction to the main story.
Books rightly should be judged on their own merits, and not by how they compare to other books dealing with similar issues, but I couldn't help doing just that. Per the book jacket, this book is about a black teenager, wrongfully convicted of killing a white police officer, and about Southern justice, and about the Jim Crow South. But I feel that other books dealing with these subjects did a better job of staying on track, and told more compelling stories. When discussing the Jim Crow South, racism in judicial proceedings, and blatant injustice in jails and courts, other books I've come across were much more compelling. When judging this book, I couldn't help comparing it to several others, especially Bryan Stevenson's "Just Mercy", which reviews injustices in criminal sentencing of the poor; and Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow" looking at race and mass incarceration after the Jim Crow era. Others which tell moving stories about racial injustice and prejudice against poor blacks in the South during the 1950's and 1960's include Gilbert King's "Devil in the Grove" about Thurgood Marshall's fight against injustice, Doug McAdam's "Freedom Summer" which discusses voter registration issues in the South, and "The Port Chicago 50", by Steve Sheinkin. If choosing only one book on this subject area, I'd choose one of these other books over "He Calls Me by Lightning". (