Items related to To Defy the Monster

To Defy the Monster - Hardcover

Allison, Albert Arthur

 
9780595781928: To Defy the Monster

Synopsis

July 8, 1932, 11 PM. East Austin, an African-American district in Jim Crow Texas. Sixty-year-old Charles Johnson is driving home from Bible study when a car full of young white men swerves in front of him. A brief altercation ensues. Convinced that his life is threatened, Johnson fires his pistol and drives away. Johnson's shot kills the unarmed, eighteen-year-old son of Albert Allison, a prominent cotton landlord, influential in politics, and an advocate for racial justice. Although devastated, Allison personally thwarts a lynch mob and then insists that Austin's courts treat Johnson fairly. Nonetheless, Allison expects fairness to execute his son's killer. Johnson himself expects to be lynched, either by the mob or by the court. To Defy the Monster shows how the confluence of unique cultural and historical factors determines Johnson's fate and why Allison orders his family never to speak of the matter.

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About the Author

Al Allison is a fifth-generation Texan with degrees from Harvard and the University of Texas. After Naval service in Viet Nam, he worked in business and politics in the United States and Europe, where he lived for twenty years before returning to his Texas roots.

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