Customer Reviews

The Algiers Motel Incident

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John Hersey is most widely know for his terrific fiction writing in books such as: A Single Pebble. But at the pinnacle of the American Civil Rights movement, in 1968, he came through with an astounding nonfiction detailed summary of the heinous Algiers Motel incident.

The short of the story is that three black men were murdered by Detroit police officers and/or National Guardsmen at the Algiers Hotel during a time of riots in the Motor City. The three victims were Carl Cooper, Aubury Pollard, and Fred Temple. There were plenty of witnesses including a couple of part-time prostitutes from Columbus, Ohio but, when the smoke cleared, no murder charges against the assailants were ever pursued to a logical conclusion.

If there were ever a case of sweeping a case of multiple murders under the rug, this is the poster example. Much of the commentary is follow-up on Hersey's part with the living principals of the incident and he did a terrific job with his interviews.

John Hersey (1914-1993) was born in Tientsin, China, to missionary parents. When he was ten years old he returned to the United States with his family. Then he attended the Hotchkiss School, Yale University, and performed his graduate study as a Mellon Fellow at Cambridge. He worked as a secretary for Sinclair Lewis during the summer of 1937. Later that year he began work at Time Magazine. Two years following that, he was transferred to Time's Chongqing bureau. He wrote many excellent novels during his lifetime, but his Magnum opus was non-fiction: Hiroshima.

The incident at the Algiers Motel smacked of a prior multiple murder, occurring four years prior near Philadelphia, Mississippi and the case was similarly documented at that time by William Bradford Huie: Three Lives for Mississippi.

If you have the slightest interest in the American Civil Rights movement, you'll find "The Algiers Motel Incident" compelling reading indeed. Highly recommended.

I am the niece of Carl Cooper, and I am glad that John wrote the book! I was told that John may have been killed over the book. The book told the truth about white cops in those days. My grandmother (Carl Cooper's Mother) has never been the same since my uncle's death. When he died it took apart of her that she will never beable to regain.

John Hersey needs no raves from me. At chronicalling the major events of the 20th century in living prose he has absolutely no peer. In this book he focuses in on the entire racist system acting in one chilling incident of the Detroit Riot of 1967, in which the police, trapping several people of mixed ethnicity tortured some of them, murdered others, and could not be brought to justice.

As the wife of one of the police officers in the book, I can say that this is pure fiction. Portrayals of the officers involved were backwards. Incidents were recognized strictly by date and location, certainly not actual facts. I lost all respect for Hersey after reading this.