Lynching

<p>The <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of <em>The Kennedy Women</em> chronicles the powerful and spellbinding true story of a brutal race-based killing in 1981 and subsequent trials that undid one of the most pernicious organizations in American history--the Ku Klux Klan.</p><p>On a Friday night in March 1981 Henry Hays and James Knowles scoured the streets of Mobile in their car hunting for a black man. The young men were members of Klavern 900 of the United Klans of America. They were seeking to retaliate after a largely black jury could not reach a verdict in a trial involving a black man accused of the murder of a white man. The two Klansmen found nineteen-year-old Michael Donald walking home alone. Hays and Knowles abducted him beat him cut his throat and left his body hanging from a tree branch in a racially mixed residential neighborhood.</p><p>Arrested charged and convicted Hays was sentenced to death--the first time in more than half a century that the state of Alabama sentenced a white man to death for killing a black man. On behalf of Michael's grieving mother Morris Dees the legendary civil rights lawyer and cofounder of the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a civil suit against the members of the local Klan unit involved and the UKA the largest Klan organization. Charging them with conspiracy Dees put the Klan on trial resulting in a verdict that would level a deadly blow to its organization.</p><p>Based on numerous interviews and extensive archival research <em>The Lynching</em> brings to life two dramatic trials during which the Alabama Klan's motives and philosophy were exposed for the evil they represent. In addition to telling a gripping and consequential story Laurence Leamer chronicles the KKK and its activities in the second half the twentieth century and illuminates its lingering effect on race relations in America today.</p><p><em>The Lynching</em> includes sixteen pages of black-and-white photographs.</p>