Customer Reviews

Georgia Nigger (Criminology, Law Enforcement and Social Problems)

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Like John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, Georgia N----- is both a first-rate work of investigative journalism and a very well crafted and engaging novel. It is John Louis Spivak's lightly fictionalized exposé of how white business- and lawmen continued to work together in the South well over half a century after the Civil War to trap innocent black people into peon farms and chain gangs, and of the hideous conditions and barbarous treatment prevailing within these slave-powered enterprises.

That is not to say that Georgia N----- is at all sensationalistic. The book rakes a tremendous amount of muck, to be sure, but Spivak is very careful to keep his protagonist's experiences well within the ordinary; in fact, Georgia N----- contains an appendix with photographs and official documents that confirm the typicality of so much of what takes place in the book. Neither does Spivak demonize his white or sanctify his black characters; they are all all too human. And his tone and diction are not fevered but matter-of-fact (though by no means dry)--although he does use the word "n-----" throughout, instead of, say, "black." Why he does this, I can only guess; what is clear from context, though, is that he does not intend any slight.

To conclude, Georgia N----- is a very well written and captivating book than relates extremely important history, history that is sadly glossed over at best in high-school and college curricula. I sincerely hope that people won't let the title stop them from reading this deeply humane book.