People Wasn't Made to Burn: A True Story of Housing, Race, and Murder in Chicago

By Joe Allen

Book Overview

In 1947, James Hickman shot and killed the landlord he believed was responsible for a tragic fire that took the lives of four of his children on Chicago's West Side. But a vibrant defense campaign, exposing the working poverty and racism that led to his crime, helped win Hickman's freedom. With a true-crime writer's eye for suspense and a historian's depth of knowledge, Joe Allen unearths the compelling story of a campaign that stood up to Jim Crow well before the modern civil rights movement had even begun. As deteriorating housing conditions and an accelerating foreclosure crisis combine to form a hauntingly similar set of circumstances to those that led to the Hickman case, Allen's book restores to prominence a previously unknown story with profound relevance today.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1608461262
• ISBN13: 9781608461264
• Release Date: July 2011
• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Length: 211 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.1"