Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.66 (747 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B004LQ0FO0 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 368 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-01-08 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Finalist for the 1991 National Book Award and a New York Times Notable book, Praying for Sheetrock is the story of McIntosh County, a small, isolated, and lovely place on the flowery coast of Georgia--and a county where, in the 1970s, the white sheriff still wielded all the power, controlling everything and everybody. "An inspiring and absorbing account of the struggle for human dignity and racial equality" (Coretta Scott King). Somehow the sweeping changes of the civil rights movement managed to bypass McIntosh entirely. It took one uneducated, unemployed black man, Thurnell Alston, to challenge the sheriff and his courthouse gang--and to change the way of life in this community forever
Despite what it said in the New York Times or the Congressional Record, not everybody in America got the word right away about the civil rights movement. The story, written as grippingly as a novel, is charged with twists that only nonfiction can deliver; for example, Alston, for all the brave good he did, ultimately got caught in a federal sting and went to jail while the corrupt sheriff walked. Thus it was that well into the 1970s, McIntosh County in backwoods Georgia remained a place where the black majority still had never elected one of their own to any county office, where black kids were bused away from the white school, and where the white county sheriff had h
"Four Stars" according to Robert F. Parks. Very interesting I lived 15 miles from where all of this was going on very real to me.. Highly recommend this book Ms. Greene is an incredible writer. Highly recommend this book.. "Things I never knew and I lived there!" according to K. T. Williams. This book was so informative. I was young when a lot of the events took place but I remember being very confused about them. I thought this was a great book and everyone from McIntosh County should read it. It was cool to read about people I know. Wow!