Leamer’s story of the takedown of the largest Klan organization in America was a fascinating and equally terrifying read, especially when I realized that the death of Michael Donald took place in my own lifetime! Granted, I was 3 years old, but still…
Perhaps what was most powerful about Leamer’s story is they way in which he could humanize the characters without giving the appearance of trying to justify their inhuman actions. And of course, those efforts to put a face on the perpetrators can only go so far. For example, Klan leader Bennie Hays is (rightly) presented as a monster through-and-through.
The way Leamer chooses to tell the story felt a bit awkward to me. The first part of the book focuses on the story of Donald’s murder, the investigation (which eventually involved the FBI), and the criminal trial where Henry Hays and James Knowles were convicted of first-degree murder, Hays receiving the death-penalty and Knowles receiving life in prison after pleading guilty and testifying against Hays.
The middle part of the book is a massive digression into the personal history of Morris Dees, a co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who was the lead attorney in the subsequent wrongful death suit brought by Donald’s mother against the United Klans of America. Leamer goes to great lengths to trace Dees’ journey into the civil rights litigation, which is perhaps book-worthy in its own right since, at one point, Dees was the financial director for arch-racist George McGovern’s 1972 campaign. For Leamer, there’s no love lost for McGovern, and at points it feels as if he is trying to “rescue” Dees’ reputation from the stain of association with McGovern.
The final section of the book provides a detailed account of the civil lawsuit brought by Dees against the United Klans of America that resulted in a stunning $7 million finding for the plaintiff by an all-white jury in Alabama. The UKA was bankrupted by the lawsuit, and the evil Bennie Hays was convicted of inciting to murder.
What Leamer doesn’t emphasize (or perhaps he did and I missed it) is that this civil lawsuit is a landmark decision establishing an important precedent for dealing with the “agency” role of groups that promote hate-speech and holding them both complicit and liable for the ways in which their rhetoric incites violence.
My interest in this story is rooted in my larger fascination with the Civil Rights Movement. It serves as a stark reminder that many of those battles continue to be fought decades after the much-hailed passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As recent events have demonstrated, racial tensions are still a controlling feature of American public life, a reality that we must acknowledge. For me, this is all the proof needed that court decisions and legislation do very little, if anything, to change the heart of a nation. What we really need is a spiritual revival that will call us to truly love our brothers and sisters made in the image of God! ( )

The Lynching:The Epic Courtroom Battle That Brought Down The Klan by Laurence Leamer jumped out at me when I picked out audio book. Why didn't I remember this event? I thought back I was working plenty of overtime during the trial. Being so tired, I did not listen to the news, I just went right to bed. This subject is topical because of the resurgence of the Neo-Nazis and the Klan.

Michael Donald, a nineteen year old black man was killed by two Klansman in Mobile, Alabama. He was unarmed, had nothing to defend himself. He did nothing to provoke them. They picked him out to kill totally at random. The Klansman were trying to get recognition with the local Klan. This senseless killing. They beat him until he could not move, slit his throat and then hung him up so it killing looked like a lynching.

The story focuses on the two men who did the killing, the attorneys and George Wallace. I recalled interviews with him in the past, all his failed runs for president and his terms as governor. There were details that I did not know like George Wallace insisted that she run for governor of Alabama when he could not. He and her doctor kept the diagnosis of cancer from her and later it came back and she died in office. There are lots of details about George Wallace that I was not aware of.

More importantly was the tremendous amount of research that the author covered in the re-telling of the events and the trial. There were some places that could have been edited more but overall it is a dramatic retelling of an important trial. The judgment and publicity deal a giant blow to the Klan. However, it is not over, there have been changes but the organization still persists. ( )

5461. The Lynching The Epic Courtroom Battle That Brought Down the Klan, by Laurence Leamer (read 14 Apr 2017) This book tells of the killing of Michael Donald, a 19-year-old black youth in Mobile, AL, on 21 Mar 1981 by Klan men, and of the criminal proceedings following that killing and also of the civil suit brought by Morris Dees, a quirky Alabama lawyer, against the men who did the deed and the men who inspired them to do it and against the Klan itself. The account is colloquial and it is easy to see the author is no lawyer. The source notes are sketchy and I thought it would have been better if the account were more lawyer-like. The bibliography lists a number of books I have read, each of which was better than this one. The dust jacket lists blurbs by, inter alia, Douglas Brinkley and Dan Carter, both of whom wrote books which I thought well-done. I suppose blurbs are just a favor which an author does for another author and one should not expect them to be very critical. The book tells an interesting and important story but not very well, IMHO. ( )

This is a powerful book about a lynching in Mobile, Alabama that took place in 1981 and the the trial that linked this crime to the United Klans of America. It is also the story of Morris Dees who evolved from being a supporter of George Wallace to founding the Southern Poverty Law Center and who successfully prosecuted the case as a civil suit.

The beginning of the book that covers the actual crime is especially powerful. On the one hand, the Klan, the peope who are members and it's "secret rituals" with Imperial Wizards, Klaverns, Klegals, Grand Cyclopse and Klokans are laughable because they are so ignorant, but on the other, their amoral violence that was tolerated by the ruling elites of Southern society (even as those elites looked down on Klan members as "white trash.") as a way to enforce Southern apartheid is especially disturbing.

One has to admire Morris Dees who, after an epiphany and turned his back on racial politics and the society they supported, did not care about being ostracized in Mobile, shunned by his family, or receiving death threats from right wing groups across the country.

In a year when political campaigns are exploiting people's worst racial fears, this is an important book to read. ( )

Engrossing, spellbinding, heartfelt are the words that came to mind when I finished this grippingly readable true crime narrative. This book is narrative non-fiction at its best in the same vein as “Devil in the Grove”. This time the spotlight is shining on Alabama, specifically Mobile as it looks at two different trials; one trial of a revenge-based killing that lead to a crusade to legally challenge the UKA (United Klans of America – name of the KKK during the Civil Rights era). The lynching referred to in the title refers to the 1981 killing/lynching of a young black man randomly plucked off the streets by two klansmen to retaliate for an almost all-black jury not convicting a black man accused of murdering a white man. Despite the gains of the Civil Rights gains in the 1960s, Mobile was still firmly in the grips of the UKA. One of the strong points of this book is the author effectively writing of the everyday lives of this place in this time – the fear and oppression inflicted by the white supremacist environment leaps off the pages. The second trial is Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ferocious courtroom battles to destroy the UKA.

A very timely informative suspenseful read clocked full of history we need to be reminded of/be informed of to be more knowledgeable of the complex and often uniformed account of race in our past and affecting our current discord. ( )