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Title details for He Calls Me by Lightning by S. Jonathan Bass - Available

He Calls Me by Lightning

The Life of Caliph Washington and the Forgotten Saga of Jim Crow, Southern Justice, and the Death Penalty

by S. Jonathan Bass
Mirron Willis
Audiobook
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1 of 1 copy available
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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 2, 2017

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781515995562
      • File size: 393852 KB
      • Duration: 13:40:31

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Author Bass unravels the complex threads that made up the life of Caliph Washington and the systematic racism that nearly brought him to his death at the hands of the state on three occasions in the mid-twentieth-century South. Mirron Willis's deep, slightly raspy voice has a gentleness and a slight Southern accent that make listening to the audiobook enjoyable, even if the story leaves one heartbroken and sickened. He has the right voice to enliven the big historical details while also drawing out the personal moments in Washington's life described by Bass. Washington's situation is one that has proven to be all too common in U.S. history, and Willis's narration makes listening to his story an important and powerful experience. L.E. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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