NATIVE SON – Richard Wright – Siget
Signet 794 1950 1st vg- Price includes UK Posting and bespoke packaging – For other postal rates to more far flung locations please contact me.
£6.00
Trouble in July by Erskine Caldwell – Signet
Signet 567 1949 21st vg+ Price includes UK Posting and bespoke packaging – For other postal rates to more far flung locations please contact me.
£6.50
Trouble in July by Erskine Caldwell – Signet
Signet S 1608 1958 36th vg Price includes UK Posting and bespoke packaging – For other postal rates to more far flung locations please contact me.
£6.00
DRINKERS OF DARKNESS – Gerald Hanley – Pyramid
Pyramid 1956 1st vg “Desire and decadence in the seething tropics” Price includes UK Posting – For other postal rates to more distant locations please contact me.
£8.50
Kingsblood Royal by Sinclair Lewis
Bantam 1949 3rd vg+ “While some white critics found the novel contrived, Ebony, a prominent African-American magazine, ranked it as the most important novel of the year. “The white establishment tended to view the novel as wildly implausible. Black people viewed it as profoundly perceptive.” Price includes UK Posting – For other postal rates to more distant locations please contact me.
£6.00
Clara – Lonnie Coleman
Bantam 1953 1st vg The moving, dramatic story of two women—one Negro, the other White—in a small Alabama town and how they influenced each other’s lives for better or worse. Price includes UK Posting – For other postal rates to more distant locations please contact me.
£11.00
Reprisal by Arthur Gordon
Corgi 1953 vg+ “A savage Novel of Hatred and Revenge” Violence is never a simple matter. Whether it is ever justified is a more thorny question still… In this case, the three men had murdered his wife. There was no doubt in Nathan’s mind that they had been members of the mob that dragged the four victims out of the car on that lonely road just outside of town. And there was no hope that Southern justice would ever exact any penalty for the crime. So Nathan packed a suitcase, loaded his Army pistol, and went back to Hainesville. It seemed as simple as that. But this quest for vengeance spread in a complex pattern that enveloped many lives – and blasted the artificial calm of a guilty town. Arthur Gordon’s vivid and angry novel probes deep beneath the surface of this taut situation to examine its impact on a deftly portrayed variety of characters. REPRISAL moves with the swift pace and sharp suspense of an early Hitchcock movie thriller, yet its main achievement is the portrayal of the inhabitants of Hainesville, men and women far more real and complicated than the thin stereotypes who people most novels that deal with racial barriers. There is Melady, the little writer from a magazine up North, who tried so hard not to become personally involved in his assignment – and failed; Yancey Brown, the proud, dignified undertaker who was the town’s Negro leader; Unity, a minister’s daughter filled with reforming zeal; and Shep whom she loved, hard and self-willed and immovable. There is Hester, with a scarred face and a secret shame; and Bubber Aycock, whose private lusts had provoked the lynching. Threading together through all their lives is Nathan, frightened but determined, moving through the night on his desperate mission. When a social abscess bursts in terror and violence, and its effect is recounted by a brilliant story-teller, the result must be a novel not to be missed. REPRISAL is just such a book. Price includes UK Posting – For other postal rates to more distant locations please contact me. I will apply a discount for simultaneous purchases, If I remember.
£12.50
THE DISTRICT OFFICER – Michael Kittermaster
Digit UK R389 Undated probably first vg+ “Illicit Love and Racial Hatred in the Depth of Africa Price includes UK Posting – For other postal rates to more distant locations please contact me.
£7.50
TRESPASS – Eugene Brown
Pocket Book 1953 1st vg+ Price includes UK Posting – For other postal rates to more distant locations please contact me.
£6.50
The Colour of Rape – John L Hensley
Ace 1960 1st edition vg+ “1. The Arrest of a coloured man who is convicted by public opinion before his trial.” Price includes UK Posting – For other postal rates to more distant locations please contact me.
£12.50
The Crime of Ruby McCollum by William Bradford Huie
A Grey Arrow paperback published in 1959 (1st edition) I have not read the book so I don’t know how sympathetic to the subject the book is. I have to admit to knowing nothing of this case that is so topical now as the right in the USA are reintroducing Jim Crow laws. This is a near fine edition of a rare book. Price includes UK Posting – For other postal rates to more distant locations please contact me. I will apply a discount for simultaneous purchases, If I remember.
£26.50
Ruby McCollum, born Ruby Jackson (August 31, 1909 – May 23, 1992), was a wealthy married African-American woman in Live Oak, Florida, who is known for being arrested and convicted in 1952 for killing Dr. C. Leroy Adams, a prominent white doctor and state senator–elect. The judge restricted her testimony, but she did testify as to their sexual relationship and his paternity of her child. The judge prohibited her from recounting her allegations that Adams had repeatedly raped her, and forced her to bear his children. She was sentenced to death for his murder by an all-white jury. The sensational case was covered widely in the United States press (including press report written by Zora Neale Hurston, as well as by international papers). McCollum was subjected to a gag order. Her case was appealed and overturned by the State Supreme Court.
Before the second trial, McCollum was examined and found mentally incompetent to stand trial. She was committed to the state mental hospital (Florida State Hospital) at Chattahoochee, Florida. In 1974 her attorney, Frank Cannon, obtained her release under the Baker Act, as she was not considered a danger to herself or others.
In the 21st century, McCollum and her case received renewed attention, with books and four film documentaries exploring the issues of race, class, sexual violence, gender, and corruption in local politics from a modernist perspective. McCollum’s case is considered a landmark trial by these people in the struggle for civil rights as they believe she was the first black woman to testify against a white man’s sexual abuse and paternity of their child. It is considered to have helped change attitudes about the practice of “paramour rights”. McCollum’s attorney, Releford McGriff, became part of a team who worked to change Florida’s Jim Crow practice of selecting all-white juries. (Black people were still disenfranchised at that time and thus not eligible to serve as jurors, who were limited to voters.)
The Crime of Ruby McCollum by William Bradford Huie
A Grey Arrow paperback published in 1959 (1st edition) I have not read the book so I don’t know how sympathetic to the subject the book is. I have to admit to knowing nothing of this case that is so topical now as the right in the USA are reintroducing Jim Crow laws. This is a near fine edition of a rare book. Price includes UK Posting – For other postal rates to more distant locations please contact me. I will apply a discount for simultaneous purchases, If I remember.
£26.50
Not in Heckmondwike Book Shop 