ABHM Book Club Presents: Our Town By Cynthia Carr
August 7th, 2023 marks 93 years since the day in 1930 that our founder, Dr. James Cameron, survived a public lynching in Marion, Indiana at just 16 years old (below is the photo of the lynching that Dr. Cameron survived on August 7, 1930). He is one of few known survivors of a public lynching in American history. He spent the remainder of his life as a beacon for education, equal rights, forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing.
Unlike Dr. Cameron, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were lynched and killed by a mob of over 10,000 people that day. In honor of all three of them, our August book club read will be Cynthia Carr’s Our Town. In Our Town, Carr, who grew up in Marion and later became a journalist, explores the issues of race, loyalty, and memory in America through the lens of this lynching that occurred in Marion but could have happened anywhere. Part mystery, part history, part true crime saga, Our Town is a riveting read that lays bare a raw and little-chronicled facet of our national memory and provides a starting point toward reconciliation with the past.
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