PEOPLE WASN’T MADE TO BURN: A TRUE STORY OF RACE, MURDER, AND JUSTICE IN CHICAGO
Book ID/图书代码： 11650011B46601
English Summary/英文概要： The long-buried story of a Chicagoan’s struggle for justice after four of his children perished in a tragic fire.
In 1947, James Hickman shot and killed the landlord he believed was responsible for a tragic fire which took the lives of four of his children on Chicago’s west side. Prosecutors sought a death sentence for Hickman, but a vibrant defense campaign — which included the famous actress Tallulah Bankhead and acclaimed artist Ben Shahn — exposed how working poverty and racism led to his crime and helped win Hickman’s freedom.
In the best tradition of True Crime drama and narrative non-fiction, Joe Allen unearths the compelling story of a campaign that was willing to stand up to Jim Crow well before the modern civil rights movement had even begun. As deteriorating housing conditions and an accelerating foreclosure crisis combine to form a hauntingly similar set of factors as those which led to the tragic fire that claimed the lives of James Hickman’s children, Allen’s book restores to prominence a previously unknown individual whose story has profound relevance to today.
Chinese Summary/中文概要： 我夢想有一天，這個國家會站立起來，真正實現其信條的真諦：“我們認為這些真理是不言而喻的，人人生而平等。”—馬丁.路德. 金1947年，芝加哥西區發生火災，詹姆斯.西克曼四個孩子葬身于火海之中。對此，西克曼堅信他的房東具有不可推卸的責任，於是在憤怒和悲痛之中將其擊斃。他的辯護團隊通過揭露工人階級極端貧困生活狀態以及他們所遭受的種族歧視，最終使西克曼無罪釋放。
在本書中，約翰.艾倫以犯罪小說家的懸疑眼光和歷史學家般的淵博知識，揭露了在當代民權運動開始之前就已進行的黑人權力鬥爭。
隨著住房條件的日益惡化，抵押品贖回危機的迅速加劇，一系列相似的社會狀況應運而生，並最終導致“西克曼事件”。在本書中，艾倫通過講述一個曾經不為人知、但與當今社會有著深刻關聯的真實事件，重新肯定了這場權益鬥爭的重大歷史意義。（from XMM）
Awards/获奖情况：“James Hickman was one of the hundreds of thousands of black Mississippians to move to Chicago in the 1940s. The nightmarish tragedy that befell the Hickman family there, as well as the actions of the dedicated activists who fought to save Hickman’s life by revealing the institutional foundations of that tragedy, are vividly depicted in Joe Allen’s important and moving history. Hickman’s story illustrates the toxic nature of racial segregation and economic exploitation. The outraged community that united to support Hickman is a refreshing reminder of people’s power to organize for change.”---Beryl Satte, author of Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America
“Astonishing. ... People Wasn’t Made to Burn does nothing less than reinvent the true-crime genre. ... Allen has rescued a part of our social history, which on its own is an impressive accomplishment. He has turned the true-crime genre upside down, which also is a fantastic feat. But by book’s end, Allen relates the Hickman case to our own troubled times.”---Dave Zirin, The Nation
About the Author/作者介绍： 喬.艾倫時常在《國際社會主義評論》上發表文章。長久以來，他一直為社會正義事業而奮鬥，包括勞工運動，廢除死刑運動以及反伊拉克戰爭運動。喬曾經出版過Vietnam: The (Last) War the United States Lost一書。
本.沙恩是一名社會現實主義藝術家，歌頌那些為正義而鬥爭的戰士，包括Sacco 和 Vanzetti，大蕭條時期的勞工激進分子，以及20世紀60年代的民權活動家。
Joe Allen is a frequent contributor to the International Socialist Review and a longstanding social justice fighter, involved in the ongoing struggles for labor, abolition of the death penalty, and against the Iraq war. He is the author of Vietnam: The (Last) War the United States Lost.
Ben Shahn’s social realist art celebrated the lives of those who struggled for justice, from Sacco and Vanzetti to the labor militants of the Great Depression to the civil rights activists of the 1960s.
Format:HARDCOVER
Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE
Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE
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