Description
Book SynopsisIn 1965 the drive for black voting rights in the south culminated in the epic Selma to Montgomery Freedom March. After brutal state police beatings stunned the nation on Bloody Sunday, troops under federal court order lined the route as the march finally made its way to the State Capitol and a triumphant address by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But within hours klan terror struck, claiming the life of one of the marchers, Viola Liuzzo, a Detroit mother of five. Turner offers an insider's view of the three trials that took place over the following nine monthswhich finally resulted in the conviction of the killers. Despite eyewitness testimony by an FBI informant who was riding in the car with the killers, two all-white state juries refused to convict. It took a team of Civil Rights Division lawyers, led by the legendary John Doar, to produce the landmark jury verdict that klansmen were no longer above the law. This is must reading today, as the voting rights won in Selma come under renewe
Trade ReviewFifty years ago, American justice triumphed over the Alabama klan - thanks to the fearless work of the Civil Rights Division. Jim Turner's moving account reminds us that we can overcome the darkest attacks on human freedom, a lesson well worth remembering today as we confront new challenges to our basic civil rights."" - Deval Patrick, former Governor of Massachusetts and former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights
""Jim Turner recounts the true story of how a team of skilled federal lawyers accomplished the seemingly impossible - convicting the klansmen who murdered Viola Liuzzo in 1965 - a victory for honest, non-partisan civil rights enforcement that ended a hundred years of klan immunity to the sting of justice."" - Roy Reed,
New York Times reporter who covered Selma and the Liuzzo trials
""James P. Turner's compelling picture of state prosecutions marred by local prejudice and the successful federal prosecution in this landmark case is a timely reminder of why we need a strong Civil Rights Division in the U.S. Department of Justice when state law enforcement fails to protect our rights."" - Brian K. Landsberg, McGeorge School of Law
