What remained of the badly decomposed body of twelveA -yearA -old
Tina Marie Andrews was discovered underneath a discarded sofa in
the woods outside of McComb, Mississippi, on August 23, 1969. Ten
days earlier, Andrews and a friend had accepted a ride home after
leaving the Tiger's Den, a local teenage hangout, but they were
driven instead to the remote area where Andrews was eventually
murdered. Although eyewitness testimony pointed to two local police
officers, no one was ever convicted of this brutal crime, and to
this day the case remains officially unsolved. Contemporary local
newspaper coverage notwithstanding, the story of Andrews's murder
has not been told. Indeed, many people in the McComb community
still, more than fifty years later, hesitate to speak of the
tragedy. Trent Brown's Murder in McComb is the first comprehensive
examination of this case, the lengthy investigation into it, and
the two extended trials that followed. Brown also explores the
public shaming of the state's main witness, a fifteen-year-old
unwed mother, and the subsequent desecration of Andrews's grave.
Set against the uneasy backdrop of the civil rights movement,
Brown's study deftly reconstructs various accounts of the murder,
explains why the juries reached the verdicts they did, and explores
the broader forces that shaped the community in which Andrews lived
and died. Unlike so many other accounts of violence in the Jim Crow
South, racial animus was not the driving force behind Andrews's
murder; in fact, most of the individuals central to the case, from
the sheriff to the judges to the victim, were white. Yet Andrews,
as well as her friend Billie Jo Lambert, the state's key witness,
were ""girls of ill repute,"" as one defense attorney put it. To
many people in McComb, Tina and Billie Jo were ""trashy"" children
whose circumstances reflected their families' low socioeconomic
standing. In the end, Brown suggests that Tina Andrews had the
great misfortune to be murdered in a town where the locals were
overly eager to support law, order, and stability- instead of true
justice- amid the tense and uncertain times during and after the
civil rights movement.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
(1)
