You Can't Kill a Man Because of the Books He Reads
Angelo Herndon's Fight for Free Speech
-
- $33.99
Publisher Description
The story of a young, Black Communist Party organizer wrongly convicted of attempting to incite insurrection and the landmark case that made him a civil rights hero.
Decades before the impeachment of an American president for a similar offense, Angelo Herndon was charged under Georgia law with “attempting to incite insurrection”—a crime punishable by death. In 1932, the eighteen-year-old Black Communist Party organizer was arrested and had his room illegally searched and his radical literature seized. Charged under an old slave insurrection statute, Herndon was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to eighteen to twenty years on a chain gang. You Can’t Kill a Man Because of the Books He Reads chronicles Herndon’s five-year quest for freedom during a time when Blacks, white liberals, and the radical left joined forces to define the nation’s commitment to civil rights and civil liberties.
Herndon’s champions included the young, Black Harvard Law School–educated attorney Benjamin J. Davis Jr.; the future historian C. Vann Woodward, who joined the interracial Herndon defense committee; the white-shoe New York lawyer Whitney North Seymour, who argued Herndon’s appeals; and literary friends Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright. With their support, Herndon won his freedom and reinvented himself as a Harlem literary star until a dramatic fall from grace.
A legal odyssey of Herndon’s narrow escape from certain death because of his unpopular political beliefs, You Can’t Kill a Man Because of the Books He Reads explores Herndon’s journey from Alabama coal miner to Communist Party organizer to Harlem hero and beyond. Brad Snyder tells the stories of the diverse coalition of people who rallied to his cause and who twice appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. They forced the Court to recognize free speech and peaceable assembly as essential rights in a democracy—a landmark decision in 1930s America as well as today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Georgetown law professor Snyder (Democratic Justice) vividly recreates the life of labor organizer Angelo Herndon (1914–1997), who in 1932 faced "a possible death sentence" over his possession of "communist literature." Born to Alabama sharecroppers, Herndon began working at 13 and was soon drawn to the local chapter of the American Communist Party. After rising through the party ranks and moving to Atlanta, he became a target of the KKK and Georgia government officials. Following the police seizure of radical literature from his rooms, he was charged with "insurrection" under a slavery-era law. At his trial, his attorney argued that "you can't kill a man because of the books he reads," staving off a death sentence. Herndon was convicted and consigned to a chain gang, but after years of appeals the Supreme Court finally overtured Georgia's insurrection law as unconstitutional, freeing Herndon. He went on to become a "literary figure" in Harlem, penning an autobiography and founding a magazine (he made Ralph Ellison managing editor). Snyder astutely dissects Herndon's story for its ramifications for civil liberties and free speech today—including the continued persecution Herndon faced for the political content of his magazine, which Snyder is careful to layer with Herndon's own shortcomings as a businessman (Ellison, whose paychecks "failed to materialize," quit after the third issue). The result is a rewarding and kaleidoscopic look at the early years of civil rights activism.
