Haley Newlin’s Reviews > American Nightmare > Status Update

“[Clark] begins to understand that the Nightmare is more than bodies hanging from trees or burned at the stake—far more than senseless, brutal violence…the Nightmare’s highly logical. To build this nation, rich men have always wielded it.”

“[Clark’s] whiteness and his luck were one and the same—his whiteness, which always made him feel like a curse, a killer of dreams. But some dreams are really nightmares. And eventually, all luck turns bad.”

President Wilson won’t pass the anti-lynching bill

THE RED SUMMER OF 1919

A period of violent, white supremacist attacks, massacres, and lynchings

F*ck Woodrow Wilson

Clark says he doesn’t have time to read and Gloria (NAACP) says “Oh, but you must make it. It’s the only way to understand the world we live in.”

Clark suffering from combat tinnitus

As of 1919, no lyncher’s ever been brought to justice
And the President, Woodrow Wilson, is screening THE BIRTH OF A NATION in the White House, a violent epic that glorifies KKK as heroes of the South

“A rabbit’s got to know when to run and when to hide. If he can’t tell the difference, he’s nothing but stew.”


Clark’s nickname is Rabbit bc of how fast he ran on the football field

White men drew huge crowds for lynchings and then sold “souvenirs”

The victim’s hair, skin, fingers, bones.

NAACP’s mission, send Clark in to get details and names of men responsible for lynchings and run the stories in the press.

“Every time a Negro dies, we want the paper of record to print the kinds of gruesome stories the public simply can’t ignore.”

Clark almost blows his cover by standing in white train car when they call “Baltimore! Coloreds move to the last car!”

He smells the reek of gasoline from the night the mob came when he was 13. He’s like a soldier with PTSD