He Calls Me By Lightning
The Life of Caliph Washington and the forgotten Saga of Jim Crow, Southern Justice, and the Death Penalty
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- $34.99
Publisher Description
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post and Kirkus Reviews
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection
A Southern Independent Booksellers Association “Spring Pick”
This harrowing portrait of the Jim Crow South “proves how much we do not yet know about our history” (New York Times Book Review).
Caliph Washington didn’t pull the trigger but, as Officer James "Cowboy" Clark lay dying, he had no choice but to turn on his heel and run. The year was 1957; Cowboy Clark was white, Caliph Washington was black, and this was the Jim Crow South.
Widely lauded for its searing “insight into a history of America that can no longer be left unknown” (Washington Post), He Calls Me by Lightning is an “absorbing chronicle” (Ira Katznelson) of the forgotten life of Caliph Washington that becomes an historic portrait of racial injustice in the civil rights era. Washington, a black teenager from the vice-ridden city of Bessemer, Alabama, was wrongfully convicted of killing a white Alabama policeman in 1957 and sentenced to death. Through “meticulous research and vivid prose” (Patrick Phillips), S. Jonathan Bass reveals Washington’s Kafkaesque legal odyssey: he came within minutes of the electric chair nearly a dozen times and had his conviction overturned three times before finally being released in 1972. Devastating and essential, He Calls Me by Lightning demands that we take into account the thousands of lives cast away by the systemic racism of a “social order apparently unchanged even today” (David Levering Lewis).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This account of 17-year-old Caliph Washington's wrongful conviction for a 1957 murder serves as a piercing primer on racism in the American justice system. On July 12, 1957, on a deserted Alabama highway, there was a deadly encounter between 17-year-old Caliph Washington, a black teenager, and James "Cowboy" Clark, a white policeman. Convicted of murder and sentenced to execution the following October, Washington was ultimately released on Mar. 17, 1971. Historian Bass (Blessed Are the Peacemakers) keeps a sharp focus on the town of Bessemer, Ala., known for a "general climate of violence" and corruption, as he proceeds through Washington's multiple trials and appeals in his lengthy trek through local, state, and federal jurisdictions. The book includes detailed accounts of legal maneuvers and decisions, complemented by biographical sketches of just about everyone involved judges, lawyers, prosecutors, policemen, politicians, fellow prisoners, and Washington's family and friends. A casual reader may get lost in the thicket, but the details such as the technical workings of the electric chair or a discussion of the salaries of prison guards are eye-opening and carve out deeper complexities of the American justice system. 25 illus.
