Selma and the Liuzzo Murder Trials – Book Talk
Date and Time
Nov 25, 2018 6:00 pm
Location
14th & V
2021 14th St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20009
Nov 25, 2018 6:00 pm
14th & V
Join Busboys and Poets Books at our 14th and V location for a book talk with Jim Turner, author of Selma and the Liuzzo Murder Trials: The First Modern Civil Rights Convictions.Â
In 1965 the drive for black voting rights in the south culminated in the epic Selma to Montgomery Freedom March. After brutal state police beatings stunned the nation on "Bloody Sunday," troops under federal court order lined the route as the march finally made its way to the State Capitol and a triumphant address by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But within hours klan terror struck, claiming the life of one of the marchers, Viola Liuzzo, a Detroit mother of five. Turner offers an insider’s view of the three trials that took place over the following nine months—which finally resulted in the conviction of the killers. Despite eyewitness testimony by an FBI informant who was riding in the car with the killers, two all-white state juries refused to convict. It took a team of Civil Rights Division lawyers, led by the legendary John Doar, to produce the landmark jury verdict that klansmen were no longer above the law.
This event is co-sponsored by The University of Michigan Press, a vital component of UM Library's Michigan Publishing, which is the primary academic publishing division of the University. In partnership with our authors and series editors, we publish in a wide range of humanities and social science disciplines. We champion the Library's research and scholarly communication missions through our global digital and print publishing and distribution programs.
James P. Turner served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General, the senior career lawyer in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, for 25 years under seven consecutive Presidents of both parties. He donated materials to the Labadie Collection in 2014 and later returned to use the collection as source material for the book.
