Research Catalog

Summoned at midnight : a story of race and the last military executions at Fort Leavenworth

Title

Summoned at midnight : a story of race and the last military executions at Fort Leavenworth / Richard A. Serrano.

Author

Serrano, Richard A.

Publication

Boston, Massachusetts : Beacon Press, [2019]
©2019

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Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	Sc E 19-858	Schomburg Center - Research & Reference
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	JFE 19-3243	Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description

xi, 239 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

"In the late 1950s, as the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. was at last gaining ground, 16 soldiers sat confined in basement cells on death row in the army's Fort Leavenworth maximum security prison in Kansas. Exactly eight were white and eight were black. All of the white soldiers were commuted. Not only were their lives spared, but they all were eventually released and returned to their families. They benefited from powerful Washington powerbrokers, including the Eisenhower administration and Congress, high-priced, specialized lawyers and a groundswell of public support. Only the black soldiers were hung. They were summoned at midnight to a wooden gallows and dropped to their deaths. They enjoyed no Washington support, could not afford expensive lawyers and had little public backing. Their case files are meager (often containing a desperate, misspelled letter from a mother pleading for her son's life). Then in early 1961 a final case reached the Oval Office in Washington. President John Kennedy, a Democrat, a liberal, and a Catholic, a leader strong on Civil Rights, was still in his First Hundred Days when confronted with whether to spare army Private John A. Bennett. Unlike all the other condemned men, white and black, Bennett was not a murderer. He had killed no one. Instead he was sentenced to die for raping a white girl. But like the other men soldiers who were hung, Bennett was black. Were he to die, he would become the last soldier executed by the army, the last in nearly 60 years"--Provided by the publisher.

Subject

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Army justice -- Austria -- The castle -- Seven base -- White death row -- Eisenhower -- Black death row -- A great trouble -- Kennedy -- Midnight.

Call Number

Sc E 19-858

ISBN

9780807060964
0807060968

LCCN

2018025939

OCLC

1065957695

Author

Serrano, Richard A., author.

Title

Summoned at midnight : a story of race and the last military executions at Fort Leavenworth / Richard A. Serrano.

Publisher

Boston, Massachusetts : Beacon Press, [2019]

Copyright Date

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

1900-1999

Research Call Number

Sc E 19-858

JFE 19-3243

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