Audiobook13 hours
He Calls Me By Lightning: The Life of Caliph Washington and the Forgotten Saga of Jim Crow, Southern Justice, and the Death Penalty
Written by S. Jonathan Bass
Narrated by Mirron Willis
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
Caliph Washington's life was never supposed to matter. As a black teenager from the vice-ridden city of Bessemer, Alabama, Washington was wrongfully convicted of killing an Alabama policeman in 1957. Sentenced to death, he came within minutes of the electric chair-nearly a dozen times. A Kafka-esque legal odyssey in which Washington's original conviction was overturned three times before he was finally released in 1972, his story is the kind that pervades the history of American justice. Here, in the hands of historian S. Jonathan Bass, Washington's ordeal and life are rescued from anonymity and become a moving parable of one man's survival and perseverance in a hellish system.
He Calls Me by Lightning is both a compelling legal drama and a fierce depiction of the Jim Crow South that forces us to take account of the lives cast away by systemic racism.
He Calls Me by Lightning is both a compelling legal drama and a fierce depiction of the Jim Crow South that forces us to take account of the lives cast away by systemic racism.
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Reviews for He Calls Me By Lightning
Rating: 3.312500025 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
8 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A little confusing at first, but a very detailed telling of arrest, conviction, and appeals of Caliph Washington. Bass includes tangential information such as prison construction, prison life, and electric chair executions, which can be distracting, but the information adds context to the story. The book includes a note on the archival research and records consulted in the writing of this book.