A shot in the moonlight How a freed slave and a Confederate soldier fought for justice in the Jim Crow south

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.

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. (Jan.)