On the Laps of Gods

by Robert Whitaker

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September 30, 1919. The United States teetered on the edge of a racial civil war. Racial fighting had erupted in 25 cities. Deep in the Arkansas Delta, black sharecroppers formed a union to sue their white landowners, who had cheated them for years. What happened next has long been shrouded in controversy. Over several days, posses and federal troops gunned down more than 100 men, women, and children. White authorities arrested more than 300 black farmers, and in brief trials, all-white show more juries sentenced twelve union leaders to the electric chair. And then, a lawyer from Little Rock stepped forward. Scipio Africanus Jones, born a slave, joined with the NAACP to mount an appeal in which he argued that his clients' constitutional rights to a fair trial had been violated. Never before had the U.S. Supreme Court set aside a criminal verdict in a state court because the proceedings had been unfair.--From publisher description. show less

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Author Information

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4+ Works 1,990 Members
Robert Whitaker is an American journalist and author, writing primarily about medicine, science, and history. He has written on and off for the Boston Globe and in 2001, he wrote his first book Mad in America about psychiatric research and medications, the domains of some of his earlier journalism. Articles that Whitaker co-wrote won the 1998 show more George Polk Award for Medical Writing and the 1998 National Association of Science Writers¿ Science in Society Journalism Award for best magazine article. A 1998 Boston Globe article series he co-wrote on psychiatric research was a finalist for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. In April 2011, IRE announced that his book, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, had won its award as the best investigative journalism book of 2010. In 2015 it became a New York Times bestseller. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

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Common Knowledge

Canonical title
On the Laps of Gods
Original publication date
2008-06-12
People/Characters
Scipio Africanus Jones
Important places
Elaine, Arkansas, USA; Phillips County, Arkansas, USA

Classifications

Genres
Nonfiction, History, Politics and Government, General Nonfiction
DDC/MDS
976.7History & geographyHistory of North AmericaSouth central United StatesArkansas
LCC
F417 .P45 .W475Local History of the United States, Canada and Latin AmericaUnited States local historyArkansas
BISAC

Statistics

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112
Popularity
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Reviews
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Rating
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Languages
English
Media
Paper, Ebook
ISBNs
3
ASINs
4