Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led the black drive for civil rights, but the changes he sought came largely in legal opinions issued by federal judges. Foremost of these was Frank Minis Johnson, Jr., of Montgomery, Alabama, who presided over some of the most emotional hearings and trials of the rights movement—hearings brimming with dramatic and poignant testimony from the black people who cried out for the freedoms that are the legacy of all Americans. Beginning with Judge Johnson’s coming-of-age in the hill country of Winston County, Alabama, this book covers many of his notable cases: the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides, school desegregation, the Selma-to-Montgomery march, and the night-rider slaying of Viola Liuzzo, as well as Johnson’s work for prisoners, women, and the mentally ill. Much of the book is comprised of interviews and direct quotes from Johnson himself, making this recounting of Judge Johnson’s life dynamically autobiographical. Includes a new introduction and afterword by the author, Frank Sikora.

Sheyann Webb was eight years old and Rachel West was nine when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Selma, Alabama, on January 2, 1965. He came to organize non-violent demonstrations against discriminatory voting laws. Selma, Lord, Selma is their firsthand account of the events from that turbulent winter of 1965--events that changed not only the lives of these two little girls but the lives of all Alabamians and all Americans. From 1975 to 1979, award-winning journalist Frank Sikora conducted interviews with Webb and West, weaving their recollections into this luminous story of fear and courage, struggle and redemption that readers will discover is Selma, Lord, Selma.

This is a spellbinding story of a shocking crime that fuelled the civil rights movement, including new data and recent convictions. It was a time when Martin Luther King Jr and other leaders rallied black youth and adults to march for their civil rights, a time when the Ku Klux Klan was active in cities and throughout the countryside of the Deep South, employing 19th-century tactics to intimidate blacks to stay ""in their place."" It was also the year that the worst act of terrorism in the entire civil rights movement occurred just as Birmingham, Alabama, was coming under close national scrutiny. This book tells the story of one grim Sunday in September 1963 when an intentionally planted cache of dynamite ripped through the walls of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and ended the dreams and the lives of four young black girls. Their deaths spurred the Kennedy administration to send an army of FBI agents to Alabama and led directly to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. When the Justice Department was unable to bring anyone to trial for this heinous crime, a young Alabama attorney general named Bill Baxley began his own investigation to find the perpetrators. In 1977, 14 years after the bombing, Baxley brought one Klansman to trial and, in a courtroom only blocks from the bombed church (now a memorial to the victims), persuaded a jury to return a guilty verdict. More than 20 years later two other perpetrators were tried for the bombing, found guilty, and remanded to prison. Frank Sikora has used the court records, FBI reports, oral interviews, and newspaper accounts to weave a story of spellbinding proportions. A reporter by profession, Sikora tells this story compellingly, explaining why the civil rights movement had to be successful and how Birmingham had to change.

THOUGHT-PROVOKING AND HIGHLY ORIGINAL, THIS REMARKABLE COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES BY FIVE ACCLAIMED AUTHORS TAKES THE READER FROM TEEN FUMBLINGS TO THE END OF LIFE, FROM THE FANTASTICAL TO THE CRIMINAL, AND FROM THE WHIMSICAL TO THE TRAGIC.

When her brother is killed in Iraq, Abbie Staley's world is shattered. The eighteen-year-old college student finds her rural Alabama values torn asunder, altering her views on religion as well as the issue of abortion. But then a stranger comes to visit her at her home in the crossroads community of Winter Chapel. Another visit follows at the college campus. The stranger knows much about her life, and that of her brother, so much that at first she is terrified. But only then does she realize the visitor is of divine origin. While others have doubts about who she has seen, Abbie realizes that she has been chosen for something special, and devotes her life to helping others, one at a time. Her visitor comes one last time at Christmas, to leave a lasting gift that others share.

Sergeant Lionel "Chooch" Pinn was an American warrior, an Osage Indian whose career as an army sergeant met the high standards set by his father's example as a World War I veteran. Reared in the crucible of the Great Depression and case-hardened in hand-to-hand combat against the Imperial Japanese Army in WWII, Pinn went on to fight as a foot soldier in Korea, Laos, and Vietnam. Pinn recounts these wars as only an infantry soldier could. His gritty account of fighting in distant corners of the world is a journey through America's tumultuous last half of the twentieth century. Sgt. Pinn's memoir, exciting, horrifying, upsetting, is a testament to the uncompromising fighting spirit of U.S. soldiers.