Overview
Caliph Washington's life was never supposed to matter. As a black teenager from the vice-ridden city of Bessemer, Alabama, Washington was wrongfully convicted of killing an Alabama policeman in 1957. Sentenced to death, he came within minutes of the electric chair--nearly a dozen times. A Kafka-esque legal odyssey in which Washington's original conviction was overturned three times before he was finally released in 1972, his story is the kind that pervades the history of American justice. Here, in the hands of historian S. Jonathan Bass, Washington's ordeal and life are rescued from anonymity and become a moving parable of one man's survival and perseverance in a hellish system. He Calls Me by Lightning is both a compelling legal drama and a fierce depiction of the Jim Crow South that forces us to take account of the lives cast away by systemic racism.
Full Product Details
Author: S Jonathan Bass ,
Mirron Willis
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Imprint: Tantor Audio
Dimensions:
Width: 13.70cm
, Height: 1.50cm
, Length: 17.00cm
Weight: 0.113kg
ISBN: 9781665284837
ISBN 10: 1665284838
Publication Date: 02 May 2017
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Audio
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Available To Order
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Reviews
A masterly book that is well written and thoroughly researched. . . . By illuminating Washington's story of courage in the face of an unjust legal system, Bass writes an important book for those concerned about civil rights in this new era of challenges to them.-- Library Journal Starred Review He Calls Me By Lightning insists that we face the cost of lives that don't matter to a persistent racial caste system. It reminds us that human endurance and irrepressible love outlast the glacial pace of change and proves how much we do not yet know about our history. -- New York Times Book Review In sharper focus, thanks to Bass' painstaking research, is a picture of how Jim Crow legal systems operated at the local and state levels...Insight into a history of America that can no longer be left unknown. -- Washington Post
Author Information
S. Jonathan Bass is a professor at Alabama's Samford University and the author of Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the Letter from Birmingham Jail. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama. Mirron Willis--actor of film, stage, and television--is the winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2012 and a finalist for the Audie in 2015, as well as the winner of four AudioFile Earphones Awards for his audiobook recordings. He has worked extensively in film and television and on stage with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Houston Shakespeare Festival, and the Ensemble Theatre, among others. He has recorded some 150 audiobooks, including the Smokey Dalton series by Kris Nelscott and My Song by Harry Belafonte. He resides and records audiobooks on his family's historic ranch in East Texas.
