Freedom on Trial, Scott Farris
Freedom on Trial, Scott Farris
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Freedom on Trial
The First Post-Civil War Battle Over Civil Rights and Voter Suppression

Author: Scott Farris

Narrator: Keith Sellon-Wright

Unabridged: 13 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/02/2021

Synopsis

The Confederacy lost the Civil War but quickly began to win the peace when a mysterious organization arose called the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux, as it was then called, sought to restore white supremacy by terrorizing the formerly enslaved to prevent them from voting or owning firearms. To support Black resistance to the KKK's campaign of murder and mayhem, President Ulysses S. Grant suspended the writ of habeas corpus in large portions of South Carolina and sent the famed 7th Cavalry to make mass arrests.

Grant's new attorney general, the first former Confederate to serve in a presidential Cabinet and an ardent advocate for Black equality, Amos T. Akerman, aggressively prosecuted the Ku Klux in a series of sensational trials that shocked the nation and forced a reckoning regarding just how much the Civil War and the recently enacted Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution had changed America and its notions of citizenship.

Highlighting forgotten Black and white civil rights pioneers and weaving in the story of the author's own great-grandfather's crimes as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Freedom on Trial tells a gripping story of a moment pregnant with promise when race relations in the United States might have taken a dramatically different turn.

About Scott Farris

Scott Farris is the New York Times bestselling author of Kennedy & Reagan: Why Their Legacies Endure and Almost President: The Men Who Lost the Race but Changed the Nation. A former bureau chief for United Press International and a political columnist, he has interviewed most of the men and women who have sought the presidency over the past thirty years, and has managed several political campaigns. He appeared on the 2011 C-SPAN television series The Contenders, and has appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe and Melissa Harris-Perry. His work has been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and two children.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Hank

This is an incredibly timely read — both to learn more about the history of systemic racism in America and what must be done about it. Written with an engaging style and trenchant analysis, this book is a must for anybody wanting a deep dive into an oft-forgotten time period in American history.......more

Goodreads review by Scott

From the Midwest Book Review: "A timely and timeless study, "Freedom on Trial: The First Post-Civil War Battle Over Civil Rights and Voter Suppression" is an impressively meticulous work of historical research and one that helps to explain current 2016-2020 voter suppression efforts by some southern......more

Goodreads review by Roby

Freedom on Trial tells the story of the post-Civil War trials of the first iteration of the Klu Klux Klan. The book documents the heroic efforts of African Americans as they attempted to create prosperous lives for their families. It describes the work of President Grant’s attorney general who prose......more

Goodreads review by Brendan

Reading anything about the post-Civil War era in the South is usually quite soul crushing. Freedom on Trial by Scott Farris has some triumph mixed in with the soul crushing. Not only that, Farris identifies one of his own family as a former KKK member who took part in some of the actions of the Klan......more

Goodreads review by Kristen

History repeats itself over and over again. A shocking look (at least to me) of life during the early days of reconstruction and how the south refused to accept the equality of freed slaves. This book is made especially interesting because of the connection to the author's great-grandfather, an earl......more

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