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Mississippi, Race Riots and Abolitionists

When the Mississippi Ran Backwards

On December 15, 1811, two of Thomas Jefferson's nephews murdered a slave in cold blood and put his body parts into a roaring fire. The evidence would have been destroyed but for a rare act of God - or, as some believed, of the Indian chief Tecumseh.
That same day, the Mississippi River's first steamboat, piloted by Nicholas Roosevelt, powered itself toward New Orleans on its maiden voyage. The sky grew hazy and red, and jolts of electricity flashed in the air. A prophecy by Tecumseh was about to be fulfilled.
He had warned reluctant warrior-tribes that he would stamp his feet and bring down their houses. Sure enough, between December 16, 1811, and late April 1812, a catastrophic series of earthquakes shook the Mississippi River Valley. Of the more than 2,000 tremors that rumbled across the land during this time, three would have measured nearly or greater than 8.0 on the not-yet-devised Richter Scale. Centered in what is now the bootheel region of Missouri, the New Madrid earthquakes were felt as far away as Canada; New York; New Orleans; Washington, D.C.; and the western part of the Missouri River. A million and a half square miles were affected as the earth's surface remained in a state of constant motion for nearly four months. Towns were destroyed, an eighteen-mile-long by five-mile-wide lake was created, and even the Mississippi River temporarily ran backwards.
The quakes uncovered Jefferson's nephews' cruelty and changed the course of the War of 1812 as well as the future of the new republic. In When the Mississippi Ran Backwards, Jay Feldman expertly weaves together the story of the slave murder, the steamboat, Tecumseh, and the war, and brings a forgotten period back to vivid life. Tecumseh's widely believed prophecy, seemingly fulfilled, hastened an unprecedented alliance among southern and northern tribes, who joined the British in a disastrous fight against the U.S. government. By the end of the war, the continental United States was secure against Britain, France, and Spain; the Indians had lost many lives and much land; and Jefferson's nephews were exposed as murderers. The steamboat, which survived the earthquake, was sunk.
When the Mississippi Ran Backwards sheds light on this now-obscure yet pivotal period between the Revolutionary and Civil wars, uncovering the era's dramatic geophysical, political, and military upheavals. Feldman paints a vivid picture of how these powerful earthquakes made an impact on every aspect of frontier life - and why similar catastrophic quakes are guaranteed to recur. When the Mississippi Ran Backwards is popular history at its best.
When the Mississippi Ran Backwards by Jay Feldman
ISBN 0743242785

Race Riots, Civil Rights, and Murder in Jazz Age America

In the Roaring Twenties, neon lit the night, jazz played, and in northern cities glistening new sky-scrapers beckoned Negroes worn down by southern terrors. They came with battered bags and hope. Ossian Sweet was among them, carrying his parents' dreams for his future and little else. The grandson of a slave, the young physician arrived alone in Detroit - a smoky swirl of speakeasies and sprawling factories where progress and Henry Ford had pumped competition to fever pitch. As Sweet moved beneath the glittering chandeliers of Michigan Central Station, he had no inkling of what awaited him in Detroit. He could not have known that he would establish a thriving practice and find a wife to love. He would not have dared to imagine that one day he would be able to move his family from the city's most dangerous ghetto to a home of their own in a safer place. Nor could he have envisioned that his struggle to hold on to this home, his greatest pride, would lead to his indictment in a murder case that would put him and his wife in prison, bring the famous Clarence Darrow to defend them, and launch a landmark battle that helped ignite the struggle for civil rights.
Beginning with the hot summer night in 1925 when Sweet's outraged white neighbors circled his house to drive his family out, Arc of Justice is grand nonfiction storytelling - an epic canvas of dreams deferred and justice compromised, empowered by a triumphant spirit. Historian Kevin Boyle uses the story of Sweet, caught in the grip of history, to explore America in 1925, when the Klan moved north to incite hatred, and a new organization called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) - led by W.E.B. Du Bois and his Talented Tenth - rallied blacks to raise their voices and to begin the march toward equality, dignity, and self-respect.
Kevin Boyle captures the streets of Detroit as they were, introducing a gallery of characters from both the white and black communities. He pulls us into the riot that threatened the Sweets' home and the events - following a white neighbor's shooting - that led to the couple's indictments for murder and the ensuing highly politicized police investigation.
Using testimonies, court documents, and his own extensive research, Kevin Boyle moves from prosecutors to defenders, piecing together the citywide cover-up intended to convict and punish the Sweets, while simultaneously charting the NAACP's defense campaign.
Arc of Justice: A Story of Race Riots, Civil Rights, and Murder in Jazz Age America by Kevin Boyle
ISBN: 0805071458

John Brown, Abolitionist

When does principled resistance become anarchic brutality? How can a murderer be viewed as a heroic freedom fighter? The case of John Brown opens windows on these timely issues. Was John Brown an insane criminal or a Christ-like martyr? A forerunner of Osama bin Laden or of Martin Luther King, Jr.?
David Reynolds sorts through the tangled evidence and makes some surprising findings. David Reynolds demonstrates that John Brown's most violent acts - his slaughter of unarmed citizens in Kansas, his liberation of slaves in Missouri, and his dramatic raid, in October 1859, on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia - were inspired by the slave revolts, guerilla warfare, and revolutionary Christianity of the day.
David S. Reynolds shows us how John Brown seized the nation's attention, creating sudden unity in the North, where the Transcendentalists led the way in sanctifying John Brown, and infuriating the South, where pro-slavery fire-eaters exploited the Harpers Ferry raid to whip up a secessionist frenzy. Reynolds recounts how John Brown permeated politics and popular culture during the Civil War and beyond. He reveals the true depth of John Brown's achievement: not only did John Brown spark the war that ended slavery, but he planted the seeds of the civil rights movement by making a pioneering demand for complete social and political equality for America's ethnic minorities.
John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded the Civil Rights by David S. Reynolds
ISBN: 0375411887