Fire in a Canebrake : The Last Mass Lynching in America (Paperback)

Publishers Weekly,Following a spate of excellent books on lynching-Without Sanctuary; At the Hands of Persons Unknown; A Lynching in the Heartland-comes this account of the murder of two black couples in Walton County, Ga., in July 1946. According to journalist Wexler, the murders of Roger and Dorothy Malcolm and George and Mae Dorsey were the last of more than 3,000 mob lynchings of African-Americans in the United States. Following clues from published newspaper reports, FBI and legal records, and interviews conducted in 1997 with the participants who were still alive, Wexler plots a dramatic narrative involving sex, jealousy and violence, with a surprise witness to the murders who surfaces in 1991 (43 years after the killings) claiming to have lived on the run from the Klan because of what he knew. But while Wexler's sense of pacing and denouement is rousing, and her intricate, careful portrayal of the social settings and racial imaginations of the post-WWII South are just as startling. The region was rife with a new sort of racial tension spurred by the demand for basic civil rights (particularly by returning black soldiers) to the point that, under direct orders of President Truman (who was under pressure from the NAACP and the Northern press), the FBI became involved in a lynching for the first time. Smart and highly readable, if much less broad than other recent books, Wexler's account uncovers compelling personal and historic material in equal measure. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved