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Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America

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Rising Road takes one of the first "trials of the century," the murder of a catholic priest in 1920's Birmingham, Alabama, and brings it vividly to life. Like the best works in this nonfiction genre, such as Arc of Justice or Seabiscuit, the author turns what must have been painstaking historical research into a page-turning narrative that places us in the United States of 100 years ago in fully realized detail. What is so wonderful about this book are the combination of a great story--love, race, religion, family conflict--with celebrity added in (future Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black has a prominent part) together with fascinating social history and, to top it off, an "inside look" at a criminal case from the expert perspective of a law professor and former prosecutor. I learned a great deal from this book while enjoying it like a novel. Although there are very few living souls who can remember the events recounted in Rising Road (and one suspects Davies must have tracked them down and interviewed them), very few readers of this book will ever forget them. I know I wont. Highly recommended.

My first thought after reading Ms. Davies Rising Road was "I can't wait for her next book." As an academic librarian, with an interest in history, sociology, anthropology and politics, I have read many non-fiction works written for the academic scholar. What a pleasure it was to find myself reading a page-turner that was both informative and entertaining. I especially enjoyed it when Ms. Davies interjected witty editorial comments into the narration. They acted to draw the reader further in to become part of the story. Her courtroom descriptions are detailed enough to satisfy any attorney reading the book, but are clear enough to be understood by the layperson. I would certainly not hesitate to recommend this book to anyone with an interest in legal studies, history, and woman's studies.

This is a beautifully written book that captures your attention from the very first page. Although it's a true story it reads more like a novel, with the same sort of page-turning excitement as the story builds. I generally don't like non-fiction but this was a fascinating book. The author manages to convey the sense of time and place so well that I could see this as a movie in my mind.

Funded by the Ohio State University's Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and and Ethnicity, this book revisits a long forgotten trial which exposed prevalent attitudes toward race and bigotry in the early 20th century.

Fundamentally what occured was the only child of a Methodist minister, Ruth Stephenson, converted to Catholicism and married a Puerto Rican immigrant named Pedro 'Pete' Gussman in a catholic ceremony against her parents wishes. Ruth's father(Rev. Edwin Stephenson) was infuriated by the action and confronted the priest (James Doyle) who performed the marriage and killed Fr. Doyle at point blank range leaving a large whole in the priest's left temple.

In 1921, when the murder occured in Birmingham AL, most (if not all) states had laws on their books banning marriage between whites and non-whites. While racism was present in even the most northern of states, the climate in the deep south was nothing less than explosive. In mounting the defense of Rev. Stephenson, future Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black was retained. While known as an advocate of civil rights during his tenure in the Court, this was light years away. In order to subsidize the defense, the Ku Klux Klan sponsored benefits. In fact, Black eventually joined the Klan. Stephenson's defense team, using a plea of temporary insanity, pandered to the most basic fears of the white protestant populus by using race and religion to justify Stephenson's actions.

From a legal perspective, author Sharon Davies has done a magnificent job of walking her reader through the legal atmosphere of a time some 90 years ago and the prevelant attitudes toward race and religion. Somewhat surprising given current attitudes and legal advancements, subtle (and maybe not too subtle) tactics and tricks in the courtroom made securing a conviction a virtual impossibility.

In 1921 America this case generated a lot of news and polarized a nation. I found it ironic that its high profile publicity, explosive nature, and the questionable court proceedings rendered it all but a forgotten footnote. A well written, thought provoking and interesting book that immediately engages its reader, I heartily recommend this book.

Title Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America

Author Sharon Davies

Rating ****

Tags non-fiction, history, birmingham, alabama, anti-catholicism, ku klux klan, murder, trial

Rising Road is one of those histories that illustrates a specific time and place and uses that to explain something about a culture. The time is 1021, and the place is Birmingham, Alabama. The country is going through one of its periodic bouts of anti-immigrant feeling, which is tied up with strong anti-Catholic feeling. Anti-Catholic publications have millions of readers. In Birmingham, one of the strongest defenders of Catholicism is Father James Coyle, pastor of St. Paul's.

Edwin Stephenson was a staunch anti-Catholic He had been a barber, but after an injury couldn't stand all day and used his ordination as a deacon to marry couples at the Jefferson County courthouse a few doors down from St. Paul's. His daughter Ruth, to the horror of Stephenson and his wife, showed an attraction to Catholicism from the time she was twelve. Some time after her eighteenth birthday, she joined the Catholic Church and Father Coyle married her to a Catholic man originally from Puerto Rico, Pedro Gussman. A few hours later, Edwin Stephenson went to Father Coyle's house and shot and killed him.

The trial, of course, was a sensation. The Catholic community was outraged. The Klan supported Stephenson - in fact the author discovered that the Klan paid fro Stephenson's defense, which was headed by Hugo Black, future Supreme court justice. There are also indications that there were Klansmen on the jury.

Sharon Davies tells the story well. She does a good job of giving a sense of the people involved. Her coverage of a story that provoked strong feelings is fair and balanced. She has the dogged persistence required to dig deep into surviving records to get the whole story, and she is excellent in tying this story to a sense of what was occurring in the country's culture at the time. Highly recommended.

Publication Oxford University Press, USA (2009), Hardcover, 352 pages

Publication date 2009

ISBN 0195379799 / 9780195379792

Rising Road is a fascinating study of the power of nass hysteria, misinformation and bigotry. The Specifics in this case involve anti-Catholicism in the 1920s that swept the nation. An outspoken Roman Catholic priest in Birmingham, Alabama is murdered by a Methodist minister of questionable credentials. Davies does a wonderful job of investgating the social, religious and political factors that figured in the crime and the subsequent trial.

What was most chilling about this historical novel was its relavence in the United States today. The hatred that inflamed people in the 1920s is not unlike hatred that is currently being being spread against "undesirable immigrants" from Latin America. These immigrants supposedly are destroying our country and trying to claim all the benefits that "true Americans" deserve. This is scary because it dehumanizes people, much like Catholics were dehumanized 100 years ago. Hopefully history will not repeat itself.

The most important thing you need to know about this book is that Sharon Davies is a great storyteller. The tale of a Methodist minister who shoots and kills a Catholic priest for marrying the minister's daughter to a Catholic in 1920's Birmingham Alabama might sound dry as dust but in Davies' capable hands is it almost Tolstoyan.

Rising Road takes us back to a time when the Klu Klux Klan traipsed around openly. Blacks were their most common target but second on their list were Catholics. They were joined in this hatred by a surprising number of political figures who built their careers on "warning" Americans about the "menace" of the Catholic Church. Not only did publications exist solely to carry this message it was also carried on in the editorial pages of major newspapers in Birmingham. In this atmosphere the trial of the minister takes place.

Writing as much as a novelist as a historian, Davies gives us several compelling characters: the Irish priest who defends his faith publically despite the risks, the minister who turns into "the marrying parson" after his career as a barber doesn't work out, the daughter who converts to the faith her parents abhor and marries to escape them and the future Supreme Court justice who defends the minister. Even the chapters dealing with the trial, clearly taken from the transcript, come alive.

Oxford University Press deserves special praise for upping the game when it comes to academics writing for a popular audience. First The Day Wall Street ExplodedThe Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror and now Rising Road demonstrate that serious nonfiction need not be a chore to read.

Rising Road will satisfy history fans and discriminating true crimes fans as well. Highly recommended.

Prior to finishing this book, I was already recommending it to my friends. You will find yourself doing he same. This is a very well written account of an early 1900s murder trial in Alabama of a Catholic priest by a Methodist Minster whose daughter converts to Catholicism against her parents will. I enjoy American history and liked the in depth way that Professor Davies describes the events. She makes you feel like you are there watching it. I highly recommend the book and I look forward to her next.

Take one Methodist minister, add a romance between his daughter and a Catholic paperhanger, mix with a future Supreme Court justice and a Catholic priest and what do you get? A page-turning tale of murder and injustice. Sharon Davies' Rising Road is a compelling real life story that grips the reader and won't let go. This story is well written and worth reading. I highly recommend it.

... in Alabama in 1921, to be specific, when a Catholic priest was shot to death on the front porch of his rectory in Birmingham. But the 'mystery' isn't the identity of the killer; that was never in doubt. It was Edwin Stephenson, an ordained but parishless Methodist preacher, whose daughter had defied him by converting to Catholicism. Very little mystery adheres to Edwin Stephenson; he was brutal bigot, a child abuser, a KKK member, a ranting conservative who made his meager living by marrying runaway couples in the halls of the county courthouse. In short, he was a sort still familiar in "Red State" political circles. The mystery in this tale isn't the motive or the perpetrator; it's the grand perplexity of how the United States of America, where the notion that "all Men are created equal" was first declared, where the Separation of Church and State was first constitutionalized, could persist in being a land of slavery, institutionalized racism, apartheid, lynch-law, fanaticism, religious bigotry, xenophobia and genocide. What pale shade of indecency separates the Second Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s from the Nazi Stormtroopers of the same era?

This historical study is as much about the Second Ku Klux Klan as it is about the bizarre trial that followed the murder of Father James Coyle. The first KKK had unquestionably achieved its goals of aborting Reconstruction and restoring White Supremacy in lieu of legal slavery. It must have seemed reasonable, to KKK extremists of the 1920s, to expect the same success, and indeed it's a bit of a mystery why it failed. Even after scandals routed the national leadership of the KKK, racism and religious bigotry were scarcely damped in the USA. The targets of the Second KKK were not so often African-Americans; their suppression had been consummated long before. The fiercest rhetoric of the Second KKK was against Catholics, Jews, and immigrants from southern/eastern Europe. It was rabid anti-Catholic 'populism' -- syllable for syllable the equivalent of today's "talk radio" ranting -- that created the climate of violence which spawned the murder of Father Coyle and the even more gruesome murder of a Catholic priest in Colma, California, in the same year. That hatred of Catholicism was still in evidence at the time of the election of John F. Kennedy, after which America had the audacity to congratulate itself on its 'tolerance' ... 186 years after Jefferson's Declaration thereof.

Read this book with humility, Americans! The author, legal scholar Sharon Davies, is taking it easy on you. Not rubbing salt in your wounds. That task is left for me. The language of bigotry and the spirit of violence of the KKK in the 1920s is agonizingly close to the language of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry of "conservatives" in the USA today. The self-righteousness of the Tea Party is the same self-righteousness of those who excused the hate crimes against Catholics, people of color, and union organizers in the 1920s. America in the decade before FDR and the New Deal was quite far along the path to Nazism, so far along that it's a mystery how it was avoided. Looking at the USA in 2012, it almost seems that the avoidance was merely temporary.