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Title details for They Stole Him Out of Jail by William B. Gravely - Available

They Stole Him Out of Jail

Willie Earle, South Carolina's Last Lynching Victim

by William B. Gravely
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"Reminds readers that the history of lynching and racial violence in the United States is not a closed book, but an ever-relevant story." —Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books
Before daybreak on February 17, 1947, twenty-four-year-old Willie Earle, an African American man arrested for the murder of a Greenville, South Carolina, taxi driver named T. W. Brown, was abducted from his jail cell by a mob, and then beaten, stabbed, and shot to death. An investigation produced thirty-one suspects, most of them cabbies seeking revenge for one of their own. The police and FBI obtained twenty-six confessions, but, after a nine-day trial in May that attracted national press attention, the defendants were acquitted by an all-white jury.
In They Stole Him Out of Jail, William B. Gravely presents the most comprehensive account of the Earle lynching ever written, exploring it from background to aftermath and from multiple perspectives. Among his sources are contemporary press accounts (there was no trial transcript), extensive interviews and archival documents, and the "Greenville notebook" kept by Rebecca West, the well-known British writer who covered the trial for the New Yorker magazine. Gravely meticulously recreates the case's details, analyzing the flaws in the investigation and prosecution that led in part to the acquittals. Vivid portraits emerge of key figures in the story, including both Earle and Brown, Solicitor Robert T. Ashmore, Governor Strom Thurmond, and West, whose article "Opera in Greenville" is masterful journalism but marred by errors owing to her short stay in the area. Gravely also probes problems with memory that resulted in varying interpretations of Willie Earle's character and conflicting narratives about the lynching itself.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 13, 2022

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781611179385

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781611179385
      • File size: 3463 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      February 1, 2019

      In the wake of a fatal attack on a white taxicab driver in Greenville, SC, in February 1947, a mob snatched 24-year-old Willie Earle from jail and tortured, stabbed, and shot him. Gravely (emeritus, religious studies, Univ. of Denver; Gilbert Haven, Methodist Abolitionist) painstakingly reconstructs the background of the lynching, along with providing an overview of Earle's life. After Earle's death, the FBI and local police arrested 31 white men and received 26 confessions. The nine-day trial of the accused men in May 1947 drew national interest in large part, Gravely notes, to see to what degree sentiments in the South were shifting from Jim Crow. An all-white jury immediately acquitted all defendants. But that VERDICT was hardly the last word, as Gravely shows through multiple perspectives of the trial and its consequences. The trial extended beyond the courtroom as public and political figures such as South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond and New Yorker magazine writer Rebecca West providing their own answers. VERDICT Gravely's powerful re-creation summons readers interested in grappling not only with the horrors of the past but with the continuing crisis race has wrought in criminal justice for African Americans.--Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

      Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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