{"product_id":"he-calls-me-by-lightning","title":"He Calls Me By Lightning","description":"\u003cp\u003eCaliph Washington didn't pull the trigger but, as Officer James \"Cowboy\" Clark lay dying, he had no choice but to turn on his heel and run. The year was 1957; Cowboy Clark was white, Caliph Washington was black, and this was the Jim Crow South. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWidely lauded for its searing \"insight into a history of America that can no longer be left unknown\" (\u003cem\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/em\u003e), \u003cem\u003eHe Calls Me by Lightning\u003c\/em\u003e is an \"absorbing chronicle\" (Ira Katznelson) of the forgotten life of Caliph Washington that becomes an historic portrait of racial injustice in the civil rights era. Washington, a black teenager from the vice-ridden city of Bessemer, Alabama, was wrongfully convicted of killing a white Alabama policeman in 1957 and sentenced to death. Through \"meticulous research and vivid prose\" (Patrick Phillips), S. Jonathan Bass reveals Washington's Kafkaesque legal odyssey: he came within minutes of the electric chair nearly a dozen times and had his conviction overturned three times before finally being released in 1972. Devastating and essential, \u003cem\u003eHe Calls Me by Lightning\u003c\/em\u003e demands that we take into account the thousands of lives cast away by the systemic racism of a \"social order apparently unchanged even today\" (David Levering Lewis).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"S. Jonathan Bass","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42849638907965,"sku":"9781631494529","price":26.96,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/7689\/2989\/files\/9781631494529_f6de7f5b-0450-4776-adeb-d85ca3fab8f6.jpg?v=1767040454","url":"https:\/\/www.palmleaf.com.au\/products\/he-calls-me-by-lightning","provider":"Palmleaf","version":"1.0","type":"link"}