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A Shot in the Moonlight

How a Freed Slave and a Confederate Soldier Fought for Justice in the Jim Crow South

Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
The sensational true story of George Dinning, a freed slave, who in 1899 joined forces with a Confederate war hero in search of justice in the Jim Crow south. "Taut and tense. Inspiring and terrifying in its timelessness."(Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad )

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 was George Dinning, a freed slave who'd farmed peacefully in the area for 14 years, and who had been wrongfully accused of stealing livestock from a neighboring farm. When the mob began firing through the doors and windows of Dinning's home, 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 and Pulitzer Prize finalist Ben Montgomery resurrects this dramatic but 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 unlikely story of justice to unfold in a time and place where justice was all too rare.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 21, 2020
      Journalist Montgomery (The Man Who Walked Backward) documents in this engrossing history the unlikely alliance between a former enslaved person convicted of murder in 1897 and a former Confederate soldier. A farmer in Simpson County, Ky., George Dinning was accosted in his home by a white mob accusing him of stealing. He was shot in the arm and fired back, killing a wealthy white farmer, and turned himself in to the county sheriff the next day. Montgomery draws from trial records and press accounts to describe how Dinning was convicted of manslaughter, sentenced to seven years in prison, pardoned by the governor of Kentucky, and awarded damages in a lawsuit against his attackers. In these efforts, Dinning was aided by Bennett Young, a Confederate soldier who led a raid on St. Albans, Vt., during the Civil War but devoted much of his later life to helping Black orphans and defending impoverished African Americans in court cases. Montgomery details the legal and political issues behind Dinning’s case, but has a tougher time capturing the personalities of his key subjects, Young especially. Still, this is a rewarding and well-documented look at a neglected chapter in the fight for racial justice.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Zeno Robinson is a gifted vocal artist who immerses listeners in this haunting narrative of George Dinning, a Black man who lived in late-nineteenth-century Kentucky. Dinning was convicted of manslaughter in the shooting of Jodie Conn, a white man who was among the mob who came to his home in the middle of the night. This is a sadly familiar story of racial injustice, but with several twists: Dinning won damages in federal court after being pardoned by the governor of Kentucky. Robinson smoothly delivers the carefully researched first-person accounts, newspaper editorials, and excerpts from trial transcripts. He presents Dinning and his impressive white Southern lawyer, Bennett Young, with intelligence and equanimity. Montgomery gives a sincere delivery of his author's note. M.J. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
    • Booklist

      Starred review from December 15, 2020
      The author of The Man Who Walked Backward (2018) brings to light another historical story: a harrowing crime and the subsequent trials that resulted from it in the Jim Crow South at the end of the nineteenth century. One January night in 1897 in Kentucky, George Dinning and his family are awakened by a mob of over two dozen white men, who accuse Dinning of theft and demand that he and his family leave their home. When the men start shooting, hitting Dinning twice, he fires a single shot, striking and killing one of them. Dinning immediately surrenders himself to the authorities, but the threat of his being lynched looms large as his trial approaches. After an unsatisfactory outcome for Dinning, former Confederate soldier and bank robber Bennett Young steps in to file civil charges against the men who attacked Dinning's home and burned it down the next day, forcing his family to flee. A nuanced exploration of the horrors Southern racism inflicted on Black citizens, as well as the role complicated figures like Young, who fought for the Confederacy, then became a champion for the rights of Black people, played. Blending primary source material with compelling prose, Montgomery brings to light an important turning point in a grim chapter in American history.

      COPYRIGHT(2020) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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  • English

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