Roadhouse Justice

Trent Brown is professor of American studies at Missouri University of Science and Technology. Brown is the author of multiple books, including Murder in McComb: The Tina Andrews Case.

"Brown's meticulous research tracks with precision a complex and bewildering series of events across three counties in southwest Mississippi on the eve of the civil rights movement. Readers will find in Roadhouse Justice a true crime narrative that seems at once familiar and mystifying; an authentic and fascinating reveal of the strange interplay of race, class, and sex in the segregated South."--Stephanie R. Rolph, author of Resisting Equality: The Citizens' Council, 1954-1989 "This diligently researched, absorbing, and clearly written study tells the story of Hattie Lee Barnes on its own terms, clarifying its linkages to the modern civil rights movement. It is the byproduct of a painstaking research process that takes us to the scene of the crime she allegedly committed in 1951, killing a white man attempting to rape her, while also taking its readers on a journey back in time to the local community where it happened. Brown draws portraits of all the key players, while clarifying insurgent practices in law and journalism that helped to establish truth in a time when justice was so frequently denied to Black people, whose lives and experiences were less likely to be documented. This fine study's methodology illustrates historiography at its best."--Riche Richardson, author of Emancipation's Daughters: Reimagining Black Femininity and the National Body