Blood justice : the lynching of Mack Charles Parker /

Smead's work joins James R. McGovern's masterful Anatomy of a Lynching: The Killing of Claude Neal (1982) as a model for books on lynching. The basic circumstances surrounding the deaths of Neal (1934) and Parker (1959) were similar: black men arrested on circumstantial evidence for raping white women died by the action of lynch mobs. The primary difference was active federal intervention in the Parker case, stimulated by the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement. Despite extensive investigation by the FBI, however, no mob member was brought to justice. The ultimate irony in the Parker case, Smead writes, is that Parker might have been guilty of rape, but ingrained white racism prevented Mississippi from providing a fair trial and obtaining justice through proper legal procedure. Smead used an impressive array of primary sources, particularly Justice Department and FBI documents only recently available, plus interviews with participants and newspaper accounts. The resulting history of this forgotten episode simply must be included in any public or academic library collection.-J.P. Sanson, Louisiana State University at Eunice

In a study similar to James R. McGovern's Anatomy of a Lynching: the killing of Claude Neal ( LJ 5/1/82), Smead has written a vivid account of one of the last lynchings of a black man to occur in the United States, the beating and murder of Parker in Poplarville, Mississippi, in 1959. Based upon considerable research as well as numerous interviews with townspeople, including two members of the lynch mob, Smead's story draws several parallels between this murder and earlier lynchings, e.g., the situation involved the rape of a white woman by a black man, a mob storming the jail to remove the prisoner, detailed knowledge of the conspiracy both before and after the murder, and the fact that no individual member of the lynch mob was ultimately punished. An excellent account of intense white racism in a small Southern town; recommended for academic and large public libraries. Louis Vyhnanek, Washington State Univ. Lib., Pullman (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.