After moonrise on the cold night of January 21, 1897, a mob of twenty five white men gathered in a patch of woods near Big Road in southwestern Simpson County, Kentucky. Half carried rifles and shotguns, and a few tucked pistols in their pants. Their target? George Dinning, a freed slave who'd farmed peacefully in the area for 14 years, and had been wrongfully accused of stealing livestock from a neighboring farm. When the mob began firing through the doors and windows of Dinning's house, he fired back in self-defense, shooting and killing the son of a wealthy Kentucky family.

So began one of the strangest legal episodes in American history -- one that ended with Dinning becoming the first black man in America to win damages after a wrongful murder conviction.

Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material, bestselling author Ben Montgomery resurrects this dramatic and largely forgotten story, and the unusual convergence of characters -- among them a Confederate war hero-turned-lawyer named Bennett H. Young, Kentucky governor William O'Connell Bradley, and George Dinning himself -- that allowed this thrilling but unlikely story of justice to unfold in a time and place where justice was all too rare.

About the Author
Ben Montgomery is a former enterprise reporter for the Tampa Bay Times and founder of the narrative journalism website Gangrey.com. In 2010, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in local reporting and won the Dart Award and Casey Medal for a series called "For Their Own Good," about abuse at Florida's oldest reform school. He lives in Tampa with his three children. He is the author of The Man Who Walked Backward, The Leper Spy, and Grandma Gatewood's Walk.


Book Information
ISBN 9780316535540
Author Ben Montgomery
Format Hardback
Page Count 304
Imprint Little, Brown & Company
Publisher Little, Brown & Company
Weight(grams) 500g
Dimensions(mm) 242mm * 154mm * 28mm