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In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning
“Courageous and compelling…essential and critically important.” —Bryan Stevenson
An award-winning scholar of white supremacy tackles her toughest research assignment the unsolved murder of a Black man in rural Mississippi while her grandfather was the local sheriff—a cold case that sheds new light on the hidden legacy of racial terror in America.
Grace Hale was home from college when she first heard the family legend. In 1947, while her beloved grandfather had been serving as a sheriff in the Piney Woods of south-central Mississippi, he prevented a lynch mob from killing a Black man who was in his jail on suspicion of raping a white woman—only for the suspect to die the next day during an escape attempt. It was a tale straight out of To Kill a Mockingbird , with her grandfather as the tragic hero. This story, however, hid a dark truth.
Years later, as a rising scholar of white supremacy, Hale revisited the story about her grandfather and Versie Johnson, the man who died in his custody. The more she learned about what had happened that day, the less sense she could make of her family's version of events. With the support of a Carnegie fellowship, she immersed herself in the investigation. What she discovered would upend everything she thought she knew about her family, the tragedy, and this haunted strip of the South—because Johnson's death, she found, was actually a lynching. But guilt did not lie with a faceless mob.
A story of obsession, injustice, and the ties that bind, In the Pines casts an unsparing eye over this intimate terrain, driven by a deep desire to set straight the historical record and to understand and subvert white racism, along with its structures, costs, and consequences—and the lies that sustain it.
An award-winning scholar of white supremacy tackles her toughest research assignment the unsolved murder of a Black man in rural Mississippi while her grandfather was the local sheriff—a cold case that sheds new light on the hidden legacy of racial terror in America.
Grace Hale was home from college when she first heard the family legend. In 1947, while her beloved grandfather had been serving as a sheriff in the Piney Woods of south-central Mississippi, he prevented a lynch mob from killing a Black man who was in his jail on suspicion of raping a white woman—only for the suspect to die the next day during an escape attempt. It was a tale straight out of To Kill a Mockingbird , with her grandfather as the tragic hero. This story, however, hid a dark truth.
Years later, as a rising scholar of white supremacy, Hale revisited the story about her grandfather and Versie Johnson, the man who died in his custody. The more she learned about what had happened that day, the less sense she could make of her family's version of events. With the support of a Carnegie fellowship, she immersed herself in the investigation. What she discovered would upend everything she thought she knew about her family, the tragedy, and this haunted strip of the South—because Johnson's death, she found, was actually a lynching. But guilt did not lie with a faceless mob.
A story of obsession, injustice, and the ties that bind, In the Pines casts an unsparing eye over this intimate terrain, driven by a deep desire to set straight the historical record and to understand and subvert white racism, along with its structures, costs, and consequences—and the lies that sustain it.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published November 7, 2023
180 people are currently reading
6288 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 144 reviews
November 19, 2023
The amount of research that went into the writing of this book is impressive. If you go into this book thinking the author is only going to address her grandfather's involvement of the lynching of a black man in 1947 while he was sheriff, you will be mistaken. You will learn much, much, more.
Grace Elizabeth Hale grew up believing that her beloved grandfather prevented a lynch mob from killing a man accused of raping a white woman. Over the years, her family's version of the event began to concern her. It was through her research that she learned the truth, that her grandfather was involved in the man's death. Not only does she address this in the book, but she also provides a history of the area over a wide span of years.
I was not expecting all the history that was provided and I must admit, I felt as if I was reading a history book (which I was), and not the story of her uncovering the lie that was told in her family. I was hoping for more of her personal reaction, how it affected her, the outrage, and her family members reaction upon learning the truth. The author does provide as much information as she could about what she learned about the murdered man and his family's history. What happened to this man, and so many others, is heartbreaking and tragic. Racial violence, lies, coverup, and murder evoke strong emotions and are a tragic, horrific, and brutal part of our nation's history.
A lot of information was given in this book which ends around the 80% mark with the rest being footnotes. I so wanted to feel the heart and soul of this book. Everything is told in a very matter of fact way and at times this book lacked emotion and often came across to me as cold and detached.
As I mentioned, this book felt too much like a school history book. But I do appreciate the research the author put into the writing of this book.
Others are enjoying this book more than I did, so please read their reviews as well.
Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.
Read more of my reviews at www.openbookposts.com
Grace Elizabeth Hale grew up believing that her beloved grandfather prevented a lynch mob from killing a man accused of raping a white woman. Over the years, her family's version of the event began to concern her. It was through her research that she learned the truth, that her grandfather was involved in the man's death. Not only does she address this in the book, but she also provides a history of the area over a wide span of years.
I was not expecting all the history that was provided and I must admit, I felt as if I was reading a history book (which I was), and not the story of her uncovering the lie that was told in her family. I was hoping for more of her personal reaction, how it affected her, the outrage, and her family members reaction upon learning the truth. The author does provide as much information as she could about what she learned about the murdered man and his family's history. What happened to this man, and so many others, is heartbreaking and tragic. Racial violence, lies, coverup, and murder evoke strong emotions and are a tragic, horrific, and brutal part of our nation's history.
A lot of information was given in this book which ends around the 80% mark with the rest being footnotes. I so wanted to feel the heart and soul of this book. Everything is told in a very matter of fact way and at times this book lacked emotion and often came across to me as cold and detached.
As I mentioned, this book felt too much like a school history book. But I do appreciate the research the author put into the writing of this book.
Others are enjoying this book more than I did, so please read their reviews as well.
Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.
Read more of my reviews at www.openbookposts.com
November 27, 2023
This book started strong, with an opening chapter that set the stage for the author's discovery that her revered grandfather was likely not the heroic figure depicted in family lore. Rather than preventing a lynching, it seemed likely that he had actually been one of the several white men who were directly involved in the lynching of Versie Johnson in Prentiss, Mississippi, in 1947. But beyond that opening, the writing was dry and the narrative so poorly organized that I soon despaired of learning any more actual facts about these events. The author spent a great deal of time outlining her own ancestry, and bemoaning the lack of similar data available to many Black Americans before launching a history of Jefferson Davis County in Mississippi and its discriminatory treatment of Blacks. But so much of her tale was couched in phrases including "might have" and "probably" and "possibly" and "perhaps" that it was frustrating to try to tease out fact from speculation, and it soon began to feel pointless even to try. I abandoned the book after reading less than half, deciding that I'd learned what was important in the first chapter, and continuing to read the rest added little or nothing of value.
November 5, 2023
I commend the author for researching this bit of family history, let alone writing about it. And the way that she writes about it is open and honest; I wonder if her family still talks to her.
Starting out with Native Americans in the Piney Woods area of Mississippi and leading up to the present day city of Prentiss, Mississippi, she does a hell of a job with her research and its presentation. Hale covers everything from white supremacy, to vigilante violence (aka justice), reparations, segregation, and lynching. And not just “Strange Fruit” lynching. Lynching in the sense of I’m going be judge, jury, and executioner at this very moment.
You can tell Hale loves what she does. She packed so much into this book, making it an engaging and quick read. This is one worth picking up.
Starting out with Native Americans in the Piney Woods area of Mississippi and leading up to the present day city of Prentiss, Mississippi, she does a hell of a job with her research and its presentation. Hale covers everything from white supremacy, to vigilante violence (aka justice), reparations, segregation, and lynching. And not just “Strange Fruit” lynching. Lynching in the sense of I’m going be judge, jury, and executioner at this very moment.
You can tell Hale loves what she does. She packed so much into this book, making it an engaging and quick read. This is one worth picking up.
February 7, 2024
I wanted to like this, and I was intrigued by the premise, but ultimately, this was a no for me.
What I did like: a lot of research went into this book, and there is a tremendous amount of information and history.
What I didn't like: all that history felt like it got in the way and bogged down the story that was promised at the start - a beloved family member didn't protect a Black man from a lynching, but rather participated in it.
This book could have been half as long as it was. Much of it was repetitive and/or unnecessary to the story supposedly at its core. All this additional detail also made it hard to follow what was going on.
The ick: there were several things that left me with a strong feeling of ick.
The author acknowledged that people would question if this is a story a white person should be writing. Given her family's involvement with the story itself, I'll put a pin in these concerns. However, the forward was written by John Grisham, also a white person. This would have been a great opportunity to bring in a Black voice, but it wasn't taken.
Related, the author talks about reparations in parts of this book. She detailed failed attempts to find decendents of Versie Johnson's family, so there are no direct people to compensate for the wrong perpetrated by her grandpa, but... what is happening with any money made from this book? Is she getting all of it? Bc that has strong ick all over it.
The author also said she was going to center Versie Johnson in this story. While I recognize the attempts to do so in some places, much of this story did not.
The ending was also full of ick. Starting with white citizens willing to dismantle and shutter their own resources and businesses rather than share those spaces and treat Black citizens as equals, the town has been on a sharp decline since. The book ends on a statement that no one deserves to live in a ruined town. For a locality that mostly consists of aging people who participated in and/or turned the other way as racist behavior landed this town in its current state, hard disagree. I won't feel bad that this white population is having to now reap what they sowed. Especially given the racist comments the author heard at lunch with some of these people.
The biggest ick, however, came as the author tried to speculate on why her grandpa did what he did during his first term as sheriff. While she acknowledged this and other actions he likely participated in where wrong, and she loudly called out the racism and revisionist history found in other cases and situations, she fell short of doing that in the story that was the basis for the entite book. Not one theory on the table for why her grandpa participated in a murder was simply he was racist and supported vigilante justice. The reason why doesn't matter to anyone other than her and her family, and presenting them in this book came across and some sort of attempt to justify completely unjustifiable actions. He participated in the lynching of a likely wrongly accused Black man. Full stop. The why absolutely does not matter.
What I did like: a lot of research went into this book, and there is a tremendous amount of information and history.
What I didn't like: all that history felt like it got in the way and bogged down the story that was promised at the start - a beloved family member didn't protect a Black man from a lynching, but rather participated in it.
This book could have been half as long as it was. Much of it was repetitive and/or unnecessary to the story supposedly at its core. All this additional detail also made it hard to follow what was going on.
The ick: there were several things that left me with a strong feeling of ick.
The author acknowledged that people would question if this is a story a white person should be writing. Given her family's involvement with the story itself, I'll put a pin in these concerns. However, the forward was written by John Grisham, also a white person. This would have been a great opportunity to bring in a Black voice, but it wasn't taken.
Related, the author talks about reparations in parts of this book. She detailed failed attempts to find decendents of Versie Johnson's family, so there are no direct people to compensate for the wrong perpetrated by her grandpa, but... what is happening with any money made from this book? Is she getting all of it? Bc that has strong ick all over it.
The author also said she was going to center Versie Johnson in this story. While I recognize the attempts to do so in some places, much of this story did not.
The ending was also full of ick. Starting with white citizens willing to dismantle and shutter their own resources and businesses rather than share those spaces and treat Black citizens as equals, the town has been on a sharp decline since. The book ends on a statement that no one deserves to live in a ruined town. For a locality that mostly consists of aging people who participated in and/or turned the other way as racist behavior landed this town in its current state, hard disagree. I won't feel bad that this white population is having to now reap what they sowed. Especially given the racist comments the author heard at lunch with some of these people.
The biggest ick, however, came as the author tried to speculate on why her grandpa did what he did during his first term as sheriff. While she acknowledged this and other actions he likely participated in where wrong, and she loudly called out the racism and revisionist history found in other cases and situations, she fell short of doing that in the story that was the basis for the entite book. Not one theory on the table for why her grandpa participated in a murder was simply he was racist and supported vigilante justice. The reason why doesn't matter to anyone other than her and her family, and presenting them in this book came across and some sort of attempt to justify completely unjustifiable actions. He participated in the lynching of a likely wrongly accused Black man. Full stop. The why absolutely does not matter.
October 11, 2023
Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil!
It took conviction and courage to seek the truth. The author could have quietly inquired and kept her findings to herself and loved ones. Instead, she openly investigated and opted to publish her findings. Bravo!
This work spawned from a childhood memory espousing the bravery and righteousness of her grandfather, a small town sheriff in Southern Mississippi. Per her mother’s recollection, in 1947 her father (the author’s grandfather) seemingly single-handedly prevents a lynch mob from removing from his jail his prisoner, a black man, Versie Johnson, accused of raping a White woman. Despite Mr. Johnson’s eventual wrongful and tragic demise, her mother’s retelling makes her grandfather appear to be rather noble and heroic.
Curiosity abounds and the author chooses to begin her own investigation. There’s no surprise that her research revealed an alternative scenario – via interviews and corroborating news articles sourced from both black and white news publications – she confirms the ugly truth of murder largely sanctioned by the sheriff, her grandfather.
But the author treat history buffs with the hows and whys of Versie Johnson’s lynching and countless others in the Mississippi area. She takes the reader deep into the region’s past to its formation, the long and tortured journeys of white settlers and their enslaved captives. It also explores the forced and unfair removal of Native Americans. The ways of the South is analyzed and the tools, intimidation methods, and political tactics are called out in the use to neatly and precisely to build walls, fences, roadblocks and Terror to disenfranchise, rape malign and murder African-Americans for centuries She lays it on the table to show how Versie Johnson had little to no chance of survival given his circumstances in the clutches of White men and calls out parallels with today’s police brutality/murder as well as self-righteous, bigoted vigilantes.
I applaud her impeccable research and the courage to tell the truth in the midst of so many who want to bury it. I applaud her willingness to share a shameful and dishonorable act of her beloved ancestor. I applaud her efforts to find Versie Johnson's family and tell his story knowing that her grandfather and the men who attended his murder got away unscathed and left to live their lives into old age. Hard truths are difficult to face but she did so admirably.
Thanks to the publisher, Little, Brown and Company, and Netgalley for an opportunity to review.
It took conviction and courage to seek the truth. The author could have quietly inquired and kept her findings to herself and loved ones. Instead, she openly investigated and opted to publish her findings. Bravo!
This work spawned from a childhood memory espousing the bravery and righteousness of her grandfather, a small town sheriff in Southern Mississippi. Per her mother’s recollection, in 1947 her father (the author’s grandfather) seemingly single-handedly prevents a lynch mob from removing from his jail his prisoner, a black man, Versie Johnson, accused of raping a White woman. Despite Mr. Johnson’s eventual wrongful and tragic demise, her mother’s retelling makes her grandfather appear to be rather noble and heroic.
Curiosity abounds and the author chooses to begin her own investigation. There’s no surprise that her research revealed an alternative scenario – via interviews and corroborating news articles sourced from both black and white news publications – she confirms the ugly truth of murder largely sanctioned by the sheriff, her grandfather.
But the author treat history buffs with the hows and whys of Versie Johnson’s lynching and countless others in the Mississippi area. She takes the reader deep into the region’s past to its formation, the long and tortured journeys of white settlers and their enslaved captives. It also explores the forced and unfair removal of Native Americans. The ways of the South is analyzed and the tools, intimidation methods, and political tactics are called out in the use to neatly and precisely to build walls, fences, roadblocks and Terror to disenfranchise, rape malign and murder African-Americans for centuries She lays it on the table to show how Versie Johnson had little to no chance of survival given his circumstances in the clutches of White men and calls out parallels with today’s police brutality/murder as well as self-righteous, bigoted vigilantes.
I applaud her impeccable research and the courage to tell the truth in the midst of so many who want to bury it. I applaud her willingness to share a shameful and dishonorable act of her beloved ancestor. I applaud her efforts to find Versie Johnson's family and tell his story knowing that her grandfather and the men who attended his murder got away unscathed and left to live their lives into old age. Hard truths are difficult to face but she did so admirably.
Thanks to the publisher, Little, Brown and Company, and Netgalley for an opportunity to review.
November 12, 2023
Historical anything is my favorite kind of book, the description of this story piqued my interest and I was excited to be granted an advanced readers copy from Netgalley and the publisher, many thanks to both. The author did a tremendous amount of research getting to the bottom of the story and most importantly, the truth.
The fall in my opinion is instead of delivering the gripping lynching story in question with facts, the author has written an all encompassing 200 year history lesson of the American South. The book includes facts on the arrival of the railroads, forestry and milling, the destruction of the land by clear cutting and over farming, Jim Crow, Choctaw Indians, emancipation, homesteading, slavery, and an overall black history lesson in the south where white supremacy was rampant. I felt like I was reading a history book with no direct focus. I didn’t find this book enjoyable, I was disappointed. I gave the book 2 stars for research.
The fall in my opinion is instead of delivering the gripping lynching story in question with facts, the author has written an all encompassing 200 year history lesson of the American South. The book includes facts on the arrival of the railroads, forestry and milling, the destruction of the land by clear cutting and over farming, Jim Crow, Choctaw Indians, emancipation, homesteading, slavery, and an overall black history lesson in the south where white supremacy was rampant. I felt like I was reading a history book with no direct focus. I didn’t find this book enjoyable, I was disappointed. I gave the book 2 stars for research.
Read
January 21, 2024‘For too long, too many white Americans have had too much faith in the patriotic myth of history as progress. This way of thinking superficially celebrates particular historical moments while grossly underestimating the cumulative power of the past— not just as myth but also as the consequences of human decisions— in shaping the present. By selectively remembering history, many white Americans have spared themselves the discomfort of dealing with its legacy.’
‘Today, the lying continues. Rather than trying to stop vigilante behavior, many state laws encourage it. “Stand your ground” and “open carry“ laws tempt citizens to act like law enforcement officers. More recently, state anti-abortion laws offer to pay rewards to citizens who police other citizens’ reproductive health choices. Vigilantes are being transformed into heroes.’
When it comes to “reviewing” books on Black American history, it doesn’t really feel right for me to rate them with a star rating as it’s brutal and condemnable history. Overall, a very informative read and I learned a lot about the history of lynching. I would recommend to all my non-fiction enjoyers out there!
‘Today, the lying continues. Rather than trying to stop vigilante behavior, many state laws encourage it. “Stand your ground” and “open carry“ laws tempt citizens to act like law enforcement officers. More recently, state anti-abortion laws offer to pay rewards to citizens who police other citizens’ reproductive health choices. Vigilantes are being transformed into heroes.’
When it comes to “reviewing” books on Black American history, it doesn’t really feel right for me to rate them with a star rating as it’s brutal and condemnable history. Overall, a very informative read and I learned a lot about the history of lynching. I would recommend to all my non-fiction enjoyers out there!
Read
January 15, 2025(update was supposed to be a review)
This story takes place in the next county over from where half of my family is from. It is impossible to separate myself, Alexis, from my family tree, one rooted in Covington County, Hot Coffee, Mississippi, and the back bedroom where I uncovered my great grandfather's KKK pin in my grandma's jewelry box. I may never know the true history of my family's participation in racial terror, but I know I have a duty to tell a true, honest story.
A MUST read for white southerners
This story takes place in the next county over from where half of my family is from. It is impossible to separate myself, Alexis, from my family tree, one rooted in Covington County, Hot Coffee, Mississippi, and the back bedroom where I uncovered my great grandfather's KKK pin in my grandma's jewelry box. I may never know the true history of my family's participation in racial terror, but I know I have a duty to tell a true, honest story.
A MUST read for white southerners
June 20, 2023
Title: In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning
Author: Grace Elizabeth Hale
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Genre: Nonfiction History
Pub Date: November 7, 2023
My Rating: 4 Stars
Pages: 236
This story got my attention as describes being somewhat like “To Kill a Mockingbird when Oury Berry the sheriff of Piney Woods in south-central Mississippi, acted as did Atticus Finch and prevents a lynch mob from killing a Black man who was in his jail on suspicion of attaching a white woman.
Story starts when a pregnant woman was found walking along a road in the awful heat heading to the courthouse to report that she had been attached by a black man when she was left alone as her husband wasn’t home.
She said the man asked for a drink of water and after she got the water he attacked her.
The black man Versie Johnson was quickly found and arrested. He later tried to escape and was shot. Although the sheriff was upset with the police, he thought the accused man may have rather died this way than being lynch or executed in an electric chair.
Later Oury’s granddaughter Grace is working on her dissertation and had decided to do it on what really happened to Versie Johnson. In her research she finds that there was a difference between the newspapers account and her mother’s story; although the newspaper account was also somewhat unclear.
Grace turned her dissertation into a book about the history of southern segregation, lynching, and white supremacy. .
I love that Grace’s grandfather told her ~ to keep her mind open to the traces of the past and learn to tell a good story; that way she could bring to life the history that was everywhere around us.
Oh so true!
Story is a quick but powerful read.
I am not as old as her grandfather but grew up at a time when we accepted things as ~ ‘that’s the way it is’.
I lived in a small town (not in the Deep South) and am an Italian Catholic; I was teased and bullied as I walked past the public school to go to the Catholic school. I learned to walk to school using another route as ~ that is the way one dealt with – - ‘that’s is just how it is’.- - Of course, as I got older I learned that it doesn’t have to be ‘that is the way it is”!
Loved this true story! However, also sad that that although we have had progress there is still so much more than needs to be done.
Want to thank NetGalley and Little Brown and Company for this early eGalley.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for November 7, 2023.
Author: Grace Elizabeth Hale
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Genre: Nonfiction History
Pub Date: November 7, 2023
My Rating: 4 Stars
Pages: 236
This story got my attention as describes being somewhat like “To Kill a Mockingbird when Oury Berry the sheriff of Piney Woods in south-central Mississippi, acted as did Atticus Finch and prevents a lynch mob from killing a Black man who was in his jail on suspicion of attaching a white woman.
Story starts when a pregnant woman was found walking along a road in the awful heat heading to the courthouse to report that she had been attached by a black man when she was left alone as her husband wasn’t home.
She said the man asked for a drink of water and after she got the water he attacked her.
The black man Versie Johnson was quickly found and arrested. He later tried to escape and was shot. Although the sheriff was upset with the police, he thought the accused man may have rather died this way than being lynch or executed in an electric chair.
Later Oury’s granddaughter Grace is working on her dissertation and had decided to do it on what really happened to Versie Johnson. In her research she finds that there was a difference between the newspapers account and her mother’s story; although the newspaper account was also somewhat unclear.
Grace turned her dissertation into a book about the history of southern segregation, lynching, and white supremacy. .
I love that Grace’s grandfather told her ~ to keep her mind open to the traces of the past and learn to tell a good story; that way she could bring to life the history that was everywhere around us.
Oh so true!
Story is a quick but powerful read.
I am not as old as her grandfather but grew up at a time when we accepted things as ~ ‘that’s the way it is’.
I lived in a small town (not in the Deep South) and am an Italian Catholic; I was teased and bullied as I walked past the public school to go to the Catholic school. I learned to walk to school using another route as ~ that is the way one dealt with – - ‘that’s is just how it is’.- - Of course, as I got older I learned that it doesn’t have to be ‘that is the way it is”!
Loved this true story! However, also sad that that although we have had progress there is still so much more than needs to be done.
Want to thank NetGalley and Little Brown and Company for this early eGalley.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for November 7, 2023.
October 28, 2024
Fantastic book, but not at all what I was expecting. If you are looking for a book that focuses on feelings and the emotional turmoil surrounding historical events, this is not it. Instead, if you are looking for a book that takes a personal event and then puts it within a meticulously researched historical context, then this is that book. An unflinching look at lynching and its larger impact on history, what is recorded and what isn’t, and how that negatively affects all of us. A truly remarkable and powerful book.
November 28, 2023
This book is the research of a story/historical event that happened in Prentiss, Mississippi, 1947, pertaining to the lynching of Versie Johnson and her grandfather. Grace Elizabeth Hale spent a lot of painstaking hours researching these events and many others while uncovering the truth of a story that was passed down in her family.
This is a part of our history, as a nation, that is heartbreaking, tragic, filled with lies, violence and racial inequality.
This is a part of our history, as a nation, that is heartbreaking, tragic, filled with lies, violence and racial inequality.
February 4, 2024
So boring and drawn out. Repeated the same thing over and over. We get it white people were and are bad, and Black people deserve to be compensated for our horrible ancestors' behavior. Why is white not capitalized, but Black is? The Authors grandfather was a murderer and she is trying to make herself feel better by writing a long-winded book about it. Get some therapy and leave book writing to real authors.
May 16, 2024
The author takes a skeleton of a story and fleshes it out with events occurring from the time of slavery through the Civil Rights era, some marginally related and some not at all. Along the way she invents stories that are plausible but nonetheless constructed for the purpose of asserting that every destructive force in life is the result of white supremacy.
November 13, 2023
Closer to 3.5 stars - this book was meticulously researched and clearly a passion project for the author. I’m sure no one wants to think about the atrocities past generations (especially those in your family tree) have committed, and it is a noble pursuit to establish the truth when everyone tells a different story.
My biggest concern with this book is that it was very repetitive. Obviously the Berry name is going to come up several times, as the author’s grandfather is the main antagonist, but each person’s fully name was spelled out nearly every time. And while this is helpful between sections or chapters, it does not need to be within the same paragraphs.
Hale’s social commentary as well is repetitive, as though she is filling the gap of limited historical information with the same sociopolitical ideation. I don’t disagree with her at all, but it came across as someone writing a thesis paper who needed to add some fluff in order to meet the page count.
Overall I think the story and the historical relevance was excellent and extremely important, but this book could be cut down a bit to streamline the most important elements.
Thank you to Grace Elizabeth Hale, Little Brown & Company, and NetGalley for an advanced copy on exchange for an honest review.
My biggest concern with this book is that it was very repetitive. Obviously the Berry name is going to come up several times, as the author’s grandfather is the main antagonist, but each person’s fully name was spelled out nearly every time. And while this is helpful between sections or chapters, it does not need to be within the same paragraphs.
Hale’s social commentary as well is repetitive, as though she is filling the gap of limited historical information with the same sociopolitical ideation. I don’t disagree with her at all, but it came across as someone writing a thesis paper who needed to add some fluff in order to meet the page count.
Overall I think the story and the historical relevance was excellent and extremely important, but this book could be cut down a bit to streamline the most important elements.
Thank you to Grace Elizabeth Hale, Little Brown & Company, and NetGalley for an advanced copy on exchange for an honest review.
January 27, 2024
While this book does an excellent job of painting a picture of the South after Reconstruction, I wish the author had refrained from some of the biases in language and assumptions. She is putting together a story without having all the pieces. Since it's a story of her family, it would be difficult to remove all biases, but it almost seems that she is trying to absolve herself of familial guilt by condemning her grandfather, even without all the facts.
She states, "Most white people throughout US history have lived in systems that have enabled them to deny the common humanity of people they did not think about as white. All too few have resisted. Too few today seek to reckon with past." Is she encouraging readers to also judge and then condemn their own ancestors as they view them through modern eyes? I feel like that is too simplistic. Many institutions and practices of the past are obviously worthy of condemnation, especially slavery and all the ramifications from it . People, however, are more complicated and are reacting to the environment and experiences of their own time in history.
She states, "Most white people throughout US history have lived in systems that have enabled them to deny the common humanity of people they did not think about as white. All too few have resisted. Too few today seek to reckon with past." Is she encouraging readers to also judge and then condemn their own ancestors as they view them through modern eyes? I feel like that is too simplistic. Many institutions and practices of the past are obviously worthy of condemnation, especially slavery and all the ramifications from it . People, however, are more complicated and are reacting to the environment and experiences of their own time in history.
February 13, 2024
This was an excellent book. As much as you can enjoy reading a historical look at a small southern town (Prentiss, MS) and examine the effects of racism and segregation, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It’s very well written, highly engaging, and provided a great deal of historical information that set the stage for the discussion about the actions of her own family (Grandfather Oury Berry) and his black prisoner, Versie Johnson. It was obviously a well-researched book and I thought it was very good.
February 27, 2024
This is a short book overall. However, the lynching/lie/reckoning is not actually written about until around page 120... She brings it up in the Introduction then proceeds to tell us everything about her grandfather, the area etc, or literally everything but what the book is about.
Look I studied graduate level history, I understand the desire to both provide all context as well as show all the cool stuff you learned but you laid out a thesis, stick to it. She's a good writer, the topic was interesting but it desperately needed an editor or just make it a journal article.
Look I studied graduate level history, I understand the desire to both provide all context as well as show all the cool stuff you learned but you laid out a thesis, stick to it. She's a good writer, the topic was interesting but it desperately needed an editor or just make it a journal article.
November 17, 2023
Fascinating look at how modern southern white people must confront the racist actions of their ancestors. Loved the history!
January 14, 2024
Incredibly well-researched but rather repetitive without a clear focus
April 29, 2025
Why is it that the most important books we should read are also the most difficult?
Grace Elizabeth Hale is college professor and historian from Atlanta. When her mother told her the story of how her father (Hale’s grandfather), as sheriff of Prentiss, MS, tried to protect Versie Johnson, a Black prisoner, from being lynched by an angry mob outside his jail. He was hailed as a hero, although the Black prisoner died anyway when he tried to escape and was shot and killed.
Hale, as a renowned scholar on white supremacy, felt a responsibility to delve into the history of this event. What follows is this book, painstakingly researched and painful to read.
Background statistics:
•Three characteristics were usually required for anti-lynching activists to label an act of violence a lynching: the victim had to die, three or in some cases two or more people had to participate in the murder, and the killers had to operate under the pretext of delivering justice or upholding tradition.
•Between 1865 and 1877, white southerners lynched almost two thousand Black people. Between 1883 and 1905, lynchers in Mississippi murdered at least 379 Black people.
•The Equal Justice Initiative has documented 656 lynchings of Black people in Mississippi between 1877 and 1950, the largest count for any state in the nation.
•The NAACP’s magazine The Crisis put it bluntly in 1940: “The only essential difference between a Nazi mob hunting down Jews in Central Europe and an American mob burning black men at the stake in Mississippi is that one is actually encouraged by its national government and the other is merely tolerated.”
•There were failed efforts to pass anti-lynching legislation in 1922, 1935 and 1938, including at least one bill every legislative session. In 1937, they proposed fifty-nine.
•Congress would not pass a federal anti-lynching law until 2022.
•Rather than trying to stop vigilante behavior, many state laws encourage it. “Stand your ground” and “open carry” laws tempt citizens to act like law enforcement officers.
•Jim Crow survived into the late 1960s in large part because of this wave of “underground” white supremacist violence.
Hale’s meticulous research showed that her grandfather, and other upstanding white citizens lied about the details of this and other “lynchings.” Her grandfather “saw his choice as not how to protect Versie Johnson’s life but how to manage his death.” He not die is an escape attempt, he was lynched.
“The men who do the lynchings are not the men who flout the law, but the men who sincerely believe they have the best interest of their fellow men and women at heart.”
Grace Elizabeth Hale is college professor and historian from Atlanta. When her mother told her the story of how her father (Hale’s grandfather), as sheriff of Prentiss, MS, tried to protect Versie Johnson, a Black prisoner, from being lynched by an angry mob outside his jail. He was hailed as a hero, although the Black prisoner died anyway when he tried to escape and was shot and killed.
Hale, as a renowned scholar on white supremacy, felt a responsibility to delve into the history of this event. What follows is this book, painstakingly researched and painful to read.
Background statistics:
•Three characteristics were usually required for anti-lynching activists to label an act of violence a lynching: the victim had to die, three or in some cases two or more people had to participate in the murder, and the killers had to operate under the pretext of delivering justice or upholding tradition.
•Between 1865 and 1877, white southerners lynched almost two thousand Black people. Between 1883 and 1905, lynchers in Mississippi murdered at least 379 Black people.
•The Equal Justice Initiative has documented 656 lynchings of Black people in Mississippi between 1877 and 1950, the largest count for any state in the nation.
•The NAACP’s magazine The Crisis put it bluntly in 1940: “The only essential difference between a Nazi mob hunting down Jews in Central Europe and an American mob burning black men at the stake in Mississippi is that one is actually encouraged by its national government and the other is merely tolerated.”
•There were failed efforts to pass anti-lynching legislation in 1922, 1935 and 1938, including at least one bill every legislative session. In 1937, they proposed fifty-nine.
•Congress would not pass a federal anti-lynching law until 2022.
•Rather than trying to stop vigilante behavior, many state laws encourage it. “Stand your ground” and “open carry” laws tempt citizens to act like law enforcement officers.
•Jim Crow survived into the late 1960s in large part because of this wave of “underground” white supremacist violence.
Hale’s meticulous research showed that her grandfather, and other upstanding white citizens lied about the details of this and other “lynchings.” Her grandfather “saw his choice as not how to protect Versie Johnson’s life but how to manage his death.” He not die is an escape attempt, he was lynched.
“The men who do the lynchings are not the men who flout the law, but the men who sincerely believe they have the best interest of their fellow men and women at heart.”
February 10, 2024
While the book is about her grandfather murdering a man, the author gives alot of historical context to help someone not familiar with the jim crow south at the time. It is alot of information and hard to keep straight at times. This information includes how many whites gathered to kill and/or whip Blacks with impunity, kept schools segregated, denied Blacks the right to vote, etc. I learned that once attention was given to lynching, they went underground, and continued, but lied about it. I can't imagine the trauma Black people lived with.
I gave 4 stars because it is important for us to learn history. If you're just wanting the story of the lynching her grandfather participated in, maybe skip.
"Congress would not pass a Federal anti lynching law until 2022".
I gave 4 stars because it is important for us to learn history. If you're just wanting the story of the lynching her grandfather participated in, maybe skip.
"Congress would not pass a Federal anti lynching law until 2022".
June 23, 2024
This was a really compelling read. I think many of us have researched our family history, and some of us have found some surprises. Imagine you grew up hearing a heroic tale about how in 1947 your grandfather, a sheriff of the small town of Piney Woods Mississippi, put himself between a black man and an inflamed mob looking to lynch him after he was accused of raping a white woman. Years later, Grace Elizabeth Hale,a scholar and Carnegie fellow, decided to research that story further. What she found didn’t quite match the story that had been handed down through the family. Shocked by her findings, the author e decided to set the record straight for Verise Johnson. This book takes a close look at the supremacist mentality that was not uncommon in the South at that time, and the silence that allowed it to continue. Not always an easy read, but interesting and thought provoking.
June 25, 2025
I am really torn on how to rate this one. I appreciate what the author is trying to do in correcting her family history. But there were some things that were kind of icky, and I will have to think on this one for quite a bit longer until I decide how to review and rate it.
There is extensive research here, which I can also appreciate because the author really brings to life the deep south in that period and the world Versie Johnson lived and was murdered in.
I can only hope that somewhere out there are family members who also remember and know and love him.
There is extensive research here, which I can also appreciate because the author really brings to life the deep south in that period and the world Versie Johnson lived and was murdered in.
I can only hope that somewhere out there are family members who also remember and know and love him.
April 20, 2025
Considering the topic, the writing was very dry and uncompelling. Still an interesting discussion on family legacy, racial tensions, etc.
September 24, 2025
I thought the author did a great job with explaining her white privilege but also her need to get the truth out there. What happened is just one of countless stories of lynchings and it was a dark read. It's important though that we read these stories so that they are not forgotten.
December 1, 2023
more like a 3.5/5 for me - it’s obvious a lot of research went into this book and i think it’s important for us to reckon with this part of our nation’s history… that being said, i think i was expecting this to provide more anecdotes or personal reflection–either from those involved in the story, the extended family, or from the author herself. but instead, much of it read like a passage out of a history book.
September 19, 2024
You should read this book for a useful bit of education about some of the darkest aspects of twentieth-century American history. Remember Tom Brokaw's book, THE GREATEST GENERATION? No one will be using that term after reading this book.
I have read better books by Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison, and W.E.B. DuBois. The best recent book in a slightly similar vein may be Casey Cep’s FURIOUS HOURS: MURDER, FRAUD, AND THE LAST TRIAL OF HARPER LEE. That is one amazing true-crime novel.
But if you’re interested in a book by a white historian researching a lynching that happened while her grandfather was the sheriff, this is the one.
I have mixed emotions about this book.
First the things I don’t like: (I’m sorry if this seems like a lot. It is not. And in the end, I find the book worth reading IN SPITE of these things):
Though the author is a professor of history, her default tone is blame, never neutrality. All whites are guilty of pretty much everything, and she is guilty of a lynching her grandfather participated in before she was born. White guilt flows from the author’s bone marrow, impacting every aspect of this book, right down to word choice and capitalization rules.
She does not write “slaves,” but “enslaved peoples,” not “slave owners,” but “enslavers,” not “freed slaves,” but “formerly enslaved peoples.” She capitalizes “Black” when referring to race, but does not capitalize “white” when referring to race, creating oddities like this sentence:
“Like most rural store owners, white and Black, Windham probably sold food…” (p91).
Hale assumes the worst about everyone involved. Strike that. She assumes the worst about every white (lowercase) person involved. Including her own family members.
On page 36 she quotes the newspaper’s use of dialect. A black man who learned to read late in life was proud of himself: “Gwinter git one of dem Ph.D’s, if dey don’t watch out.” Hale comments: “Casting the older Black man’s speech in a demeaning dialect, the paper urged its readers to laugh at his presumptions even as they celebrated his achievement.”
Hale is making an assumption, speculating on the motives of journalists long dead. Perhaps she is right. But I prefer a scholar who recognizes and admits when she is making an assumption. She could add the word “apparently” or “probably.” She does not.
Hale attributes racist motives to white people throughout the book. She not only speculates about their inner thoughts, but also draws conclusions about who knew what. “They knew what they were doing,” is a common sentence in this book. Everyone knew what they were doing. No one ever did a bad thing negligently or out of ignorance. Everyone did all bad things knowingly.
Again—maybe they did. Or maybe they did not.
On page 61, Hale assumes the woman handling draft registration is a racist. “The white registrar’s racism” kept her from looking into the eyes of Versie Johnson. The registrar listed his eye color as black, though Hale argues “no one actually has black irises.” Recording the man’s eye color as black makes the registrar a racist. Based on that, Hale then goes so far as to conclude the woman never looked the man in the eye, because if she had, she would know his irises were not black. If I can offer anecdotal evidence, I have seen what looked to be black eyes on people from many races, including my own. The registrar was not expected (I ASSUME) to take a magnifying glass to the man's iris. It is a quick glance. But Hale is making a leap on this point, and one which hurts her credibility.
On page 153, Hale again speculates on the motives of journalists, arguing that when four or five men ran for office in 1970 and the newspaper published only the pictures of the two black candidates, the paper did it “so white voters would know they were black.”
Maybe. Maybe not. Such certainty about these guesses should be beneath the writing of a scholar from the University of Virginia.
Now for the things I did like:
To begin, I’ll cut the writer some slack for some of the above. As all white folks know, and liberals know all-too-well, it is a tricky thing to enter the racism “space” and have conversations like this. You take a huge risk. I face these matters every semester teaching college students about things like the murder—the lynching—of Emmitt Till. To even talk about such things is to run the gauntlet. (Frankly, I fear someone I know will read this review and be offended, and that is the last thing I would want.)
So after all that I complained about above, yes. I will cut her some slack. Hale and her team of a dozen editors (judging by the acknowledgments) are to be applauded for even attempting to write about such things. But I still think inconsistent capitalization rules and euphemistic or politically correct word choices are not necessary. And stating assumptions as though they were proven facts is allowing your scholarly writing to drift into the realm of memoir writing. Good scholarship is a more valuable contribution to history than is a memoir.
I like learning, and I like books that make me think or provide insight into mysteries I have long wondered about. Here are five things I liked about this book:
1) I enjoyed the discussion of “Patronage relationships” between the races. Hale explains that blacks who had lived in a community for generations and possessed a certain skill at showing respect or deference to powerful whites could sometimes depend on those white people for help in times of trouble. I think this reality is already a known entity in the States, but I appreciated Hale providing a name for it. “Patronage relationships took a long time to build and often started when white and Black people were young.”
2) Similarly, I thought the discussion of the growth of private schools in the South was helpful. My father, born in Baton Rouge in 1935, told me long ago that when the US Supreme Court desegrated schools in Brown v. Board of Education, well-to-do white folks in Louisiana started sending their kids to private schools. Apparently the same was true in Mississippi, and schools like the Prentiss Christian School (Prentiss, Mississippi) owe their founding to the racist impulse to keep schools segregated. Because my own children attended a private school in Texas, I am not entirely comfortable with this history. It raises interesting questions about all the private schools in Houston--or any Southern state. But I believe the history is true, regardless of the integrated nature of Southern private schools today. To be honest, I even found Hale’s terminology useful: “Segregation Academies.”
3) An even more revealing truth is one that I found myself thinking about throughout the book: what role did racism play in the move of so many white southerners from the Democrat party to the Republican party? To her credit, Hale did not pound on readers with this point. She left me to discover it on my own, as I read the story of the struggle for voting rights. Having read three books in a row about Southern history, perhaps I was primed. But what I had never thought about was that some counties had more black people than white and with enough black voters to control all the Democrat primaries, the only way whites could continue to control things was to switch parties. Everything Hale said about the voting shift is contained in this one sentence: “Federal support for racial integration was the single most important factor in producing this shift.”
4) Given her definition of “lynching,” it makes sense that Hale considers the death of George Floyd a lynching by law enforcement, and the death of Ahmaud Arbery a lynching by vigilantes. This is worth considering against the historical context of racism and lynchings.
5) Finally, it was interesting to see Hale connect these dots: “‘Stand your ground’ and ‘open carry’ laws tempt citizens to act like law enforcement officers” i.e., to continue to participate in vigilante lynchings.
To sum up: this book is not perfect, but worth reading.
I have read better books by Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison, and W.E.B. DuBois. The best recent book in a slightly similar vein may be Casey Cep’s FURIOUS HOURS: MURDER, FRAUD, AND THE LAST TRIAL OF HARPER LEE. That is one amazing true-crime novel.
But if you’re interested in a book by a white historian researching a lynching that happened while her grandfather was the sheriff, this is the one.
I have mixed emotions about this book.
First the things I don’t like: (I’m sorry if this seems like a lot. It is not. And in the end, I find the book worth reading IN SPITE of these things):
Though the author is a professor of history, her default tone is blame, never neutrality. All whites are guilty of pretty much everything, and she is guilty of a lynching her grandfather participated in before she was born. White guilt flows from the author’s bone marrow, impacting every aspect of this book, right down to word choice and capitalization rules.
She does not write “slaves,” but “enslaved peoples,” not “slave owners,” but “enslavers,” not “freed slaves,” but “formerly enslaved peoples.” She capitalizes “Black” when referring to race, but does not capitalize “white” when referring to race, creating oddities like this sentence:
“Like most rural store owners, white and Black, Windham probably sold food…” (p91).
Hale assumes the worst about everyone involved. Strike that. She assumes the worst about every white (lowercase) person involved. Including her own family members.
On page 36 she quotes the newspaper’s use of dialect. A black man who learned to read late in life was proud of himself: “Gwinter git one of dem Ph.D’s, if dey don’t watch out.” Hale comments: “Casting the older Black man’s speech in a demeaning dialect, the paper urged its readers to laugh at his presumptions even as they celebrated his achievement.”
Hale is making an assumption, speculating on the motives of journalists long dead. Perhaps she is right. But I prefer a scholar who recognizes and admits when she is making an assumption. She could add the word “apparently” or “probably.” She does not.
Hale attributes racist motives to white people throughout the book. She not only speculates about their inner thoughts, but also draws conclusions about who knew what. “They knew what they were doing,” is a common sentence in this book. Everyone knew what they were doing. No one ever did a bad thing negligently or out of ignorance. Everyone did all bad things knowingly.
Again—maybe they did. Or maybe they did not.
On page 61, Hale assumes the woman handling draft registration is a racist. “The white registrar’s racism” kept her from looking into the eyes of Versie Johnson. The registrar listed his eye color as black, though Hale argues “no one actually has black irises.” Recording the man’s eye color as black makes the registrar a racist. Based on that, Hale then goes so far as to conclude the woman never looked the man in the eye, because if she had, she would know his irises were not black. If I can offer anecdotal evidence, I have seen what looked to be black eyes on people from many races, including my own. The registrar was not expected (I ASSUME) to take a magnifying glass to the man's iris. It is a quick glance. But Hale is making a leap on this point, and one which hurts her credibility.
On page 153, Hale again speculates on the motives of journalists, arguing that when four or five men ran for office in 1970 and the newspaper published only the pictures of the two black candidates, the paper did it “so white voters would know they were black.”
Maybe. Maybe not. Such certainty about these guesses should be beneath the writing of a scholar from the University of Virginia.
Now for the things I did like:
To begin, I’ll cut the writer some slack for some of the above. As all white folks know, and liberals know all-too-well, it is a tricky thing to enter the racism “space” and have conversations like this. You take a huge risk. I face these matters every semester teaching college students about things like the murder—the lynching—of Emmitt Till. To even talk about such things is to run the gauntlet. (Frankly, I fear someone I know will read this review and be offended, and that is the last thing I would want.)
So after all that I complained about above, yes. I will cut her some slack. Hale and her team of a dozen editors (judging by the acknowledgments) are to be applauded for even attempting to write about such things. But I still think inconsistent capitalization rules and euphemistic or politically correct word choices are not necessary. And stating assumptions as though they were proven facts is allowing your scholarly writing to drift into the realm of memoir writing. Good scholarship is a more valuable contribution to history than is a memoir.
I like learning, and I like books that make me think or provide insight into mysteries I have long wondered about. Here are five things I liked about this book:
1) I enjoyed the discussion of “Patronage relationships” between the races. Hale explains that blacks who had lived in a community for generations and possessed a certain skill at showing respect or deference to powerful whites could sometimes depend on those white people for help in times of trouble. I think this reality is already a known entity in the States, but I appreciated Hale providing a name for it. “Patronage relationships took a long time to build and often started when white and Black people were young.”
2) Similarly, I thought the discussion of the growth of private schools in the South was helpful. My father, born in Baton Rouge in 1935, told me long ago that when the US Supreme Court desegrated schools in Brown v. Board of Education, well-to-do white folks in Louisiana started sending their kids to private schools. Apparently the same was true in Mississippi, and schools like the Prentiss Christian School (Prentiss, Mississippi) owe their founding to the racist impulse to keep schools segregated. Because my own children attended a private school in Texas, I am not entirely comfortable with this history. It raises interesting questions about all the private schools in Houston--or any Southern state. But I believe the history is true, regardless of the integrated nature of Southern private schools today. To be honest, I even found Hale’s terminology useful: “Segregation Academies.”
3) An even more revealing truth is one that I found myself thinking about throughout the book: what role did racism play in the move of so many white southerners from the Democrat party to the Republican party? To her credit, Hale did not pound on readers with this point. She left me to discover it on my own, as I read the story of the struggle for voting rights. Having read three books in a row about Southern history, perhaps I was primed. But what I had never thought about was that some counties had more black people than white and with enough black voters to control all the Democrat primaries, the only way whites could continue to control things was to switch parties. Everything Hale said about the voting shift is contained in this one sentence: “Federal support for racial integration was the single most important factor in producing this shift.”
4) Given her definition of “lynching,” it makes sense that Hale considers the death of George Floyd a lynching by law enforcement, and the death of Ahmaud Arbery a lynching by vigilantes. This is worth considering against the historical context of racism and lynchings.
5) Finally, it was interesting to see Hale connect these dots: “‘Stand your ground’ and ‘open carry’ laws tempt citizens to act like law enforcement officers” i.e., to continue to participate in vigilante lynchings.
To sum up: this book is not perfect, but worth reading.
November 12, 2023
Review copy made available through NetGalley
The author has a personal connection to a story from her family’s past in a small town of Mississippi from the late 1940s. She had been told for years that her white grandfather had stood up for a Black man accused of raping a white woman who was pregnant and that her grandfather tried to protect the Black man from the white townspeople, who desired to lynch him. Overnight, this white mob had dragged the Black man and taken him back to the place where he allegedly committed the crime, and he went for someone else’s weapon, which got him shot. The author believes that the Black man likely did this in order to avoid the lynching he knew was unavoidable. The name of the man who was killed was Versie Johnson, and the place he allegedly committed the crime he was accused of, Lipsey Farm. She finds out through more digging in newspaper archives that the story about her grandfather was false, and that he was one of the men who shot Versie Johnson — something that when confronted, the author’s grandmother was trying to cover up, as well.
The author describes growing up in a part of Atlanta with integrated schools, new shopping malls, etc, but also a Confederate cemetery that held the bodies of men “who had died nearby when the Union army marches on Atlanta.” Lee Park is named after General Lee, the Confederate general. A local restaurant where the author used to go before it became a Chick-fil-A, hosted meetings of the local Klan very casually. Additionally, the author relates summer visits to her grandparents back in Mississippi where she grew up comforted and loved by them.
Through vivid and engaging language, the author tells the story o f this small town, Prentiss, where her grandparents lived and where her family was from and her grandfather had been the Sherriff.
She relates how over time and with more research, she uncovered a very different version of what happened to Vernie Johnson.
The author explains that even though lynchings “went underground” beginning in the 1940s, this means that they occurred — most likely with the same frequency as in the decades before — but in a more covert way with the boundaries between “legal executions, killins committed by law enforcement officials and other white citizens” causing a blur in publicly recognized lynchings. The violence did not become invisible, but rather, “white leaders conspired to keep what had happened out of the press.” They framed it in such a way so that nothing ‘officially’ occurred, so there was nothing for the FBI agents or undercover NAACP activists to investigate. The locals talked, and they knew, however. “Sometimes, Black residents managed to pass along reports to Black papers published in places like Baltimore and Chicago.” Otherwise, these acts were deliberately kept out of the spotlight, out of lynching tallies, out of official records and police reports, covered up in a pretense to hide the truth of what occurred.
Further on, the author makes an impassioned and moving case for the fact that history is not “a dry and abstract account of external forces, nor is it a mythic tale of heroes and villains.” It’s not, in other words, something that is mathematically precise or something you can’t argue with, like the fact that 1+1 equals 2. History is personal and intimate. “Yet, the best history is not based on people’s feelings or memories alone. It must also be built on facts — on material traces of past lives mined from documents, archives, and landscapes.” The author addresses what I think is a crucial point about history, which is that yes, of course it is about facts, and it’s about figures, and about dates. But it’s also very crucial to be aware at all times of who is telling the history, of what perspective it is being told from, and about the fact that there are history textbooks out there, especially those published in the South from the 1920s to the 1970s in many cases that are full of lies, or that omit Black and Native American history, or that teach children a white supremacist worldview and pretend that they are being “neutral” and presenting “the facts.” History is far more complex than people give it credit for, and it’s vital that we remain aware of this particularly as many have sought to weaponize misinformation in this arena in order to further their own agendas or to perpetuate lies so that white children don’t feel “uncomfortable” and so much worse.
So yes, history is about facts, and it’s about telling the truth. But we must also remember the ‘story’ part in that in our search for presenting the truth, we build it on the archival foundation of the concepts of trustworthiness and reliability — and when I use those terms, I’m not using them in the general, everyday definitions. I’m using them very specifically in the archival tradition. That when a document is purporting to be the Declaration of Independence or a diary entry from Langston Hughes, that the reliability of that document has been established and we know that yes, this is the document it is claiming to be.
The author does a wonderful and thorough job constructing the early history of this town, Piney Woods, and of the first Black people who lived there, many of them forced there as enslaved people. “The work they had to do when they arrived — building log shelters and cutting fields out of forests — wrecked their bodies. Many did not survive.” Through this, the author chronicles what she uncovered about the history of Versie Johnson and his family, and about how his great-great-grandmother Rachel Baggett would have ended up in Mississippi mostly likely as a result of the ‘second middle passage,’ which sent approximately one million people from eastern states like Virginia, all those miles on foot or in wagons or boats carrying “a burden of unimaginable loss.”
As the author reminds readers, when white people attacked Black people in the South, “they did not just kill individuals. They took aim at entire communities.” Nowhere is this more true than in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, or Rosewood in Florida.
Her reconstruction of Johnson’s life is riveting as much as it is painful in the hardest parts. What she uncovers in all the layers that are found is staggering, and has far more relations to her family than she thought. I cannot imagine the difficult of taking on all of the weight of this already disturbing subject matter that is so crucial to uncover and shed light on, but also the ties to the author’s family and how she must have felt as she pored over census records, newspaper records, and tried to find people to speak to about the era of her research.
Particularly as she begins to deconstruct and peel back the layers of how her grandfather operated in the death of this Black man, of the lies he told to cover up what he did, it’s incredibly distressing to read.
Overall, this is a gripping x2 book that is painful as it is fascinating, and it’s something that many, MANY more white people in America need to reconcile with. Because this isn’t ancient history. This is Tyre Nichols. This is Breonna Taylor. This has never stopped being relevant.
The author has a personal connection to a story from her family’s past in a small town of Mississippi from the late 1940s. She had been told for years that her white grandfather had stood up for a Black man accused of raping a white woman who was pregnant and that her grandfather tried to protect the Black man from the white townspeople, who desired to lynch him. Overnight, this white mob had dragged the Black man and taken him back to the place where he allegedly committed the crime, and he went for someone else’s weapon, which got him shot. The author believes that the Black man likely did this in order to avoid the lynching he knew was unavoidable. The name of the man who was killed was Versie Johnson, and the place he allegedly committed the crime he was accused of, Lipsey Farm. She finds out through more digging in newspaper archives that the story about her grandfather was false, and that he was one of the men who shot Versie Johnson — something that when confronted, the author’s grandmother was trying to cover up, as well.
The author describes growing up in a part of Atlanta with integrated schools, new shopping malls, etc, but also a Confederate cemetery that held the bodies of men “who had died nearby when the Union army marches on Atlanta.” Lee Park is named after General Lee, the Confederate general. A local restaurant where the author used to go before it became a Chick-fil-A, hosted meetings of the local Klan very casually. Additionally, the author relates summer visits to her grandparents back in Mississippi where she grew up comforted and loved by them.
Through vivid and engaging language, the author tells the story o f this small town, Prentiss, where her grandparents lived and where her family was from and her grandfather had been the Sherriff.
She relates how over time and with more research, she uncovered a very different version of what happened to Vernie Johnson.
The author explains that even though lynchings “went underground” beginning in the 1940s, this means that they occurred — most likely with the same frequency as in the decades before — but in a more covert way with the boundaries between “legal executions, killins committed by law enforcement officials and other white citizens” causing a blur in publicly recognized lynchings. The violence did not become invisible, but rather, “white leaders conspired to keep what had happened out of the press.” They framed it in such a way so that nothing ‘officially’ occurred, so there was nothing for the FBI agents or undercover NAACP activists to investigate. The locals talked, and they knew, however. “Sometimes, Black residents managed to pass along reports to Black papers published in places like Baltimore and Chicago.” Otherwise, these acts were deliberately kept out of the spotlight, out of lynching tallies, out of official records and police reports, covered up in a pretense to hide the truth of what occurred.
Further on, the author makes an impassioned and moving case for the fact that history is not “a dry and abstract account of external forces, nor is it a mythic tale of heroes and villains.” It’s not, in other words, something that is mathematically precise or something you can’t argue with, like the fact that 1+1 equals 2. History is personal and intimate. “Yet, the best history is not based on people’s feelings or memories alone. It must also be built on facts — on material traces of past lives mined from documents, archives, and landscapes.” The author addresses what I think is a crucial point about history, which is that yes, of course it is about facts, and it’s about figures, and about dates. But it’s also very crucial to be aware at all times of who is telling the history, of what perspective it is being told from, and about the fact that there are history textbooks out there, especially those published in the South from the 1920s to the 1970s in many cases that are full of lies, or that omit Black and Native American history, or that teach children a white supremacist worldview and pretend that they are being “neutral” and presenting “the facts.” History is far more complex than people give it credit for, and it’s vital that we remain aware of this particularly as many have sought to weaponize misinformation in this arena in order to further their own agendas or to perpetuate lies so that white children don’t feel “uncomfortable” and so much worse.
So yes, history is about facts, and it’s about telling the truth. But we must also remember the ‘story’ part in that in our search for presenting the truth, we build it on the archival foundation of the concepts of trustworthiness and reliability — and when I use those terms, I’m not using them in the general, everyday definitions. I’m using them very specifically in the archival tradition. That when a document is purporting to be the Declaration of Independence or a diary entry from Langston Hughes, that the reliability of that document has been established and we know that yes, this is the document it is claiming to be.
The author does a wonderful and thorough job constructing the early history of this town, Piney Woods, and of the first Black people who lived there, many of them forced there as enslaved people. “The work they had to do when they arrived — building log shelters and cutting fields out of forests — wrecked their bodies. Many did not survive.” Through this, the author chronicles what she uncovered about the history of Versie Johnson and his family, and about how his great-great-grandmother Rachel Baggett would have ended up in Mississippi mostly likely as a result of the ‘second middle passage,’ which sent approximately one million people from eastern states like Virginia, all those miles on foot or in wagons or boats carrying “a burden of unimaginable loss.”
As the author reminds readers, when white people attacked Black people in the South, “they did not just kill individuals. They took aim at entire communities.” Nowhere is this more true than in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, or Rosewood in Florida.
Her reconstruction of Johnson’s life is riveting as much as it is painful in the hardest parts. What she uncovers in all the layers that are found is staggering, and has far more relations to her family than she thought. I cannot imagine the difficult of taking on all of the weight of this already disturbing subject matter that is so crucial to uncover and shed light on, but also the ties to the author’s family and how she must have felt as she pored over census records, newspaper records, and tried to find people to speak to about the era of her research.
Particularly as she begins to deconstruct and peel back the layers of how her grandfather operated in the death of this Black man, of the lies he told to cover up what he did, it’s incredibly distressing to read.
Overall, this is a gripping x2 book that is painful as it is fascinating, and it’s something that many, MANY more white people in America need to reconcile with. Because this isn’t ancient history. This is Tyre Nichols. This is Breonna Taylor. This has never stopped being relevant.
January 11, 2024
Well, wow.
First, I cannot imagine finding out that my beloved grandfather [either one of them] wasn't the person I had grown up thinking he was. I cannot imagine finding out the story of how he saved another human being ended up being 100% wrong and that he was truly instrumental in the death of said human being. I also cannot imagine then doing the research behind it all, finding more of the truth and then WRITING A BOOK about it, so the world will know. There is transparency and then there is bravery in transparency and the author most certainly falls into the later.
This book is a lot of a lot and I was completely in for the roller-coaster ride that it was and I was not disappointed. The author never shies away from the truth [never makes excuses or tries to cover up] and is pretty blunt a times about all that happened. I was wishing there had been a little more about just how she [and her family] felt when they learned the whole truth, but after some thought, I realized that it would be almost impossible to put all those feelings in words and who knows how long it will take to fully absorb and accept the knowledge that someone you loved deeply was a cold-blooded killer - I know that knowledge would haunt me for the rest of my lifetime.
Well-written and meticulously researched, this is a must-read in these troubling times. Very well done.
Thank you to Grace Elizabeth Hale, for her bravery and transparency; may we all learn from her as we all face hardships and hard truths in the future. Thanks also to NetGalley and Little, Brown, and Company for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
First, I cannot imagine finding out that my beloved grandfather [either one of them] wasn't the person I had grown up thinking he was. I cannot imagine finding out the story of how he saved another human being ended up being 100% wrong and that he was truly instrumental in the death of said human being. I also cannot imagine then doing the research behind it all, finding more of the truth and then WRITING A BOOK about it, so the world will know. There is transparency and then there is bravery in transparency and the author most certainly falls into the later.
This book is a lot of a lot and I was completely in for the roller-coaster ride that it was and I was not disappointed. The author never shies away from the truth [never makes excuses or tries to cover up] and is pretty blunt a times about all that happened. I was wishing there had been a little more about just how she [and her family] felt when they learned the whole truth, but after some thought, I realized that it would be almost impossible to put all those feelings in words and who knows how long it will take to fully absorb and accept the knowledge that someone you loved deeply was a cold-blooded killer - I know that knowledge would haunt me for the rest of my lifetime.
Well-written and meticulously researched, this is a must-read in these troubling times. Very well done.
Thank you to Grace Elizabeth Hale, for her bravery and transparency; may we all learn from her as we all face hardships and hard truths in the future. Thanks also to NetGalley and Little, Brown, and Company for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
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