Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Explosive Revelations

Betsy Phillips’ Dynamite Nashville is a raucous, engrossing investigation of white supremacist violence

In Dynamite Nashville, Betsy Phillips plunges into the world of white supremacist violence in Nashville during the civil rights era. Phillips will discuss the book at the Tennessee State Museum on July 13.

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“Haunting My Own Name”

Julian Randall’s lyrical memoir uncovers the past to light a brighter future

Comprised of braided essays which use key pop-culture moments to weave together stories of triumph and personal exploration, Julian Randall’s The Dead Don’t Need Reminding unearths grief and deeply rooted family histories.

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Arcs of Hope and Tragedy

Frye Gaillard delivers a sprawling, panoramic history of the 1960s

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Frye Gaillard’s A Hard Rain pulls the reader into the 1960s, not just to witness its momentous events, but to feel its idealism and disenchantment. First published in 2018, A Hard Rain has recently been released in paperback and as an audiobook.

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Cracking the Code

Gordon A. Martin revisits United States v. Lynd, the civil rights case that forever changed the South

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Most Americans are familiar with the landmark civil-rights case Brown v. Board of Education. Less known is United States v. Lynd, the 1962 trial that paved the way for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote is an account of the groundbreaking trial that put Hattiesburg, Mississippi, at the center of the civil-rights debate. Written by Gordon A. Martin, Jr., one of the Justice Department attorneys in the case, the book uses oral history, legal commentary, and first-person reportage to put readers on the front row of a trial that forever changed the nature of race relations in Mississippi and the South. 

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Rights and Revolutions

Historian Timothy S. Huebner discusses how a “culture of constitutionalism” shaped the Civil War era

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In Liberty and Union, Rhodes College professor Timothy S. Huebner brings together an enormous body of scholarship on the secession crisis, Civil War, and Reconstruction, compelling us to reconsider what we think we know about the era.

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