Advanced Search Request a Book

ORDERS

Readings Orders 0

DEMANDS

Readings Demands 0

Summoned at Midnight:a Story Of Race and the Last Military Executions at Fort Leavenworth
[Hardback - 2019]
richard a. serrano
On Demand
Availability in 4-6 weeks on receipt of order
List Price: $26.95
Our Price: Rs.6595 Rs.5606
Standard Discount: 15%
You Save: Rs.989
Category: History
Sub-category: Military History
Additional Category: North American History - Law
Publisher: Beacon Press | ISBN: 9780807060964 | Pages: 256
Shipping Weight: .544 | Dimensions: 6.31 x .97 x 9.3 inches

More Buying Options

Paperback Rs.3396

Description

Uncovers the hidden world of the military legal system and the intimate history of racism that pervaded the armed forces long after integration.

Richard A. Serrano reveals how racial discrimination in the US military criminal justice system determined whose lives mattered and deserved a second chance and whose did not. Between 1955 and 1961, a group of white and black condemned soldiers lived together on death row at Fort Leavenworth military prison. Although convicted of equally heinous crimes, all the white soldiers were eventually paroled and returned to their families, spared by high-ranking army officers, the military courts, sympathetic doctors, highly trained attorneys, the White House staff, or President Eisenhower himself.

During the same 6-year period, only black soldiers were hanged. Some were cognitively challenged, others addicted to substances or mentally unbalanced—the same mitigating circumstances that had won white soldiers their death row reprieves. These men lacked the benefits of political connections, expert lawyers, or public support; only their mothers begged fruitlessly for their lives to be spared. By 1960, John Bennett was the youngest black inmate at Fort Leavenworth. His lost battle for clemency was fought between 2 vastly different presidential administrations—Eisenhower’s and Kennedy’s—as the civil rights movement was gaining steam.

Drawing on interviews, trial transcripts, and rarely published archival material, Serrano brings to life the characters in this lost history: from desperate mothers and disheartened appeals lawyers, to the prison doctors, psychiatrists, and chaplains. He shines a light on the scandalous legal maneuvering that reached the doors of the White House and the disparity in capital punishment that was cut so strictly along racial lines.

About the Author

Richard A. Serrano is a Pulitzer Prize–winning former Washington correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. He spent 45 years covering the Pentagon, the wars in Haiti and the middle East, the US Justice Department, the FBI, and the War on Terror. He is the author of four other books: One of Ours: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma Bombing; Last of the Blue and Gray: Old Men, Stolen Glory, and the Mystery That Outlived the Civil War; American Endurance: Buffalo Bill, the Great Cowboy Race of 1893, and the Vanishing Wild West; and My Grandfather’s Prison: A Story of Death and Deceit in 1940s Kansas City. Serrano lives in Fairfax, VA.

Bestsellers in History

View All
Islam: A Short History
[Paperback - 2002]
karen armstrong
In Stock
List Price: £9.99
Our Price: Rs.2145 Rs.1930
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.215
The Campaigns Of Alexander
[Paperback - 1971]
arrian
In Stock
List Price: £12.99
Our Price: Rs.2345 Rs.2110
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.235
White Mughals: Love & Betrayal In Eighteenth Century India
[Paperback - 2004]
william dalrymple
In Stock
List Price: £16.99
Our Price: Rs.3795 Rs.3415
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.380
Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind
[Paperback - 2015]
yuval noah harari
In Stock
List Price: £12.99
Our Price: Rs.2995 Rs.2695
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.300
The Histories (Translation)
[Paperback - 2003]
herodotus
Out of Stock
Availability in 4-6 weeks on receipt of order
List Price: $14
Our Price: Rs.2995 Rs.2695
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.300
21 Lessons For The 21st Century
[Paperback - 2019]
yuval noah harari
In Stock
List Price: £12.99
Our Price: Rs.2895 Rs.2605
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.290
World Order: Reflections On The Character Of Nations And The Course Of History
[Paperback - 2015]
henry kissinger
In Stock
List Price: £10.99
Our Price: Rs.2495 Rs.2245
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.250
The Earth Transformed: An Untold History
[Paperback - 2023]
peter frankopan
In Stock
List Price: £16.99
Our Price: Rs.4795 Rs.4315
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.480
The Earth Transformed: An Untold History
[Hardback - 2023]
peter frankopan
On Demand
Availability in 2-4 weeks on receipt of order
List Price: £30
Our Price: Rs.7145 Rs.6073
Standard Discount: 15%
You Save: Rs.1072
Inglorious Empire: What The British Did To India
[Paperback - 2017]
shashi tharoor
In Stock
List Price: £10.99
Our Price: Rs.2595 Rs.2335
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.260