Search results for ""Author Dick Lehr""

In 1915, two men,one a journalist agitator, the other a technically brilliant filmmaker,incited a public confrontation that roiled America, pitting black against white, Hollywood against Boston, and free speech against civil rights.Monroe Trotter and D. W. Griffith were fighting over a film that dramatized the Civil War and Reconstruction in a post-Confederate South. Griffith's film, The Birth of a Nation , included actors in blackface, heroic portraits of Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and a depiction of Lincoln's assassination. Freed slaves were portrayed as villainous, vengeful, slovenly, and dangerous to the sanctity of American values. It was tremendously successful, eventually seen by 25 million Americans. But violent protests against the film flared up across the country.Almost fifty years earlier, Monroe's father, James, was a sergeant in an all-black Union regiment that marched into Charleston, South Carolina, just as the Kentucky cavalry,including Roaring Jack Griffith, D. W.'s father,fled for their lives. Monroe Trotter's titanic crusade to have the film censored became a blueprint for dissent during the 1950s and 1960s. This is the fiery story of a revolutionary moment for mass media and the nascent civil rights movement, and the men clashing over the cultural and political soul of a still-young America standing at the cusp of its greatest days.

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Inspired by the true story of a young man's false imprisonment for murder, this is a gripping novel about a daughter’s fight for justice against the odds.In his first book for teenagers, Dick Lehr, a former reporter for the Boston Globe’s famous Spotlight Team, has re-imagined a case he investigated to create a compelling story about a daughter determined to prove her father’s innocence. On a hot summer night in Boston, a thirteen-year-old African-American girl became the innocent victim of gang-related gunfire. Amid public outcry, an immediate manhunt was on to catch the murderer, and a young African-American man was quickly apprehended, charged, and – wrongly – convicted of the crime.Trell was only a baby when her father was imprisoned, but she has always been certain of his innocence. Twelve years after his conviction, she persuades a down-on-his-luck reporter and a determined lawyer to help clear her father’s name. As they attempt to uncover back-door deals, track down crucial witnesses and unearth vital evidence that will prove her father’s innocence, it becomes clear that some people in the neighbourhood want to keep this information hidden – at any cost.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A gripping true story of violence, double-cross and corruption, Black Mass takes us deep undercover, exposing one of the most outrageous scandals in FBI history.Boston, 1975. Under a harvest moon, 'Whitey' Bulger, godfather of the Irish Mob, waits for an old school buddy. Since they last met, Little John Connolly has become a high-ranking FBI agent. Connolly needs an informant - someone with a good view of Boston's dark side. Whitey needs certain priority treatment. Soon the die is cast.

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