The Slaughter: An American Atrocity [Hardcover]

Carroll Case (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 1998

The book that break a news story... what is arguably the worst single racial atrocity in American history

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

The American people have a right to hear this story. On August 27, 1998, as a direct result of this book's publication, a member of Congress, the Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, called for a full investigation of the atrocities outlined in The Slaughter.

From the Inside Flap

Here, after more than fifty years of secrecy, the terrible truth is revealed.

It was the uncertain midpoint of World War II. The United States was embroiled in an all-out fight abroad for its very survival. But back on American soil - at an Army base in southwestern Mississippi - the unthinkable occurred. They were U. S. soldiers. They were defenseless. They were black.

What the Army tried so desperately to hide, Carroll Case has managed to uncover through thirteen years of intensive research, chance encounters, recently declassified government documents, death threats, hard work and determination. While president of a bank in south Mississippi, he met the first of many eyewitnesses to the atrocity. What he heard launched him on a search for the truth and a mission to tell it.

It is not a story the world wants to hear. But it is a story that must be told. Finally, the truth is exposed, in all its horror.

Part I chronicles Case's efforts to uncover the incident and explains in detail what actually occurred. The declassified government documents themselves are included.

Part II is The Evangeline File, a fact-based novel set in present-day south Mississippi. As Case poignantly writes, It is such a terrible, ugly tragedy, and there is an innate human hesitance to admit what actually happened. By putting it in a vehicle of fiction, it somehow makes it easier to face the truth.

The Evangeline File effectively communicates the essential elements of the historical incident while creating compelling characters - Clay Brady, the reporter who uncovers the story; Parker, his investigative partner; and Khaki, the woman Clay cannot resist, but should. It is riveting and suspenseful, as Clay unravels the secret and discovers it reaches to the highest levels of the government. While unearthing what is perhaps the worst racial crime in the country's history, he must battle the racism which, to this day, still poisons American society.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: First Biltmore Corporation; 1st edition (August 12, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0966649907
• ISBN-13: 978-0966649901
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #876,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courageous Storytelling, September 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Slaughter: An American Atrocity (Hardcover)

The Slaughter is by no means the work of a professional researcher or an academician. The author says so himself. Carroll Case is a businessman who had heard rumors and tales of this horrible massacre all of his life.

After a conversation with an employee of his who was an eyewitness to this crime, Case spent thirteen years investigating all aspects of the story and has endured personal tragedy as a result of his curiosity. He is convinced this took place because, among other evidence, he has heard eyewitness accounts. What better affirmation could there be than video tapes of this testimony, regardless of whether the witnesses are alive today?

Case brought this incident to light when no other person had the courage to do so. In his preface, he says that to write the book in the form of a novel was necessary because the facts have, to date, not been confirmed. Mr. Case offers the circumstances as he knows them to be true, and offers the rest of the world a chance to decide for themselves. This is a story written by a man passionate about his experiences and passionate about seeing the Army explain to the American people just what did go on in 1943 in Centreville, Mississippi at Camp Van Dorn.

In another of my favorite books, The Gold of Exodus, Larry Williams and Bob Cornuke did not come home from Jabal al Lawz with a fortune in gold proving they found the true Mount Sinai. They came home with a conviction and a Best Seller. We don't criticize their adventure story for lack of evidence, nor should we demand that Carroll Case produce the bodies of dead soldiers.

The Slaughter was convincing enough for a United States Congressman to demand an inquiry by the Secretary of Defense; something few books in this decade have done. In addition, it raised enough important questions for the NAACP to demand a full accounting from the Secretary of the Army. All within three weeks of the publication date of this book.

41 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Synester,intriguing,rollercoaster of a read., September 2, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Slaughter: An American Atrocity (Hardcover)

Pandora's box has been opened and the contents are frightening !

Could it be true that the United States Military machine conspired against some of its own soldiers during WWII ? Conspired to such an extent as to exterminate 1200 black soldiers in an attempt to regain control of a documented uprising in the deep south?

As told by Carroll Case, The Slaughter, An American Atrocity, is not only believable as fiction but as fact is gut wrenchingly scary.

Told in two parts, the first section reveals the facts that Case stumbled on after a happenchance conversation with an eye witness to the proposed massacre. After thirteen years of investigation , Case has uncovered what seems to be a governmental cover-up of monumental proportions.

Official military documents as well as personal letters pleading for help, indicate a southern stew ready to boil over. What do you do with 1200 misfits threatening mutiny and spoiling a good war effort ? If Cases conclusion is correct, you eradicate the obstacle and you do so where redneck justice, folklore, fact and fiction all intermingle to blur the line between reality and creative imagination.

After all, its 1943, the world is at war, and in the swampy backwoods of Mississippi, no one hears you scream. Not if your property of the U.S.Military. Not if your black.

The second part of the book is an intriguing tale of cover-up, murder, greed, and justice, all moving with breakneck speed, keeping this reader spellbound until the last word.

Set in Mississippi, the redneck is alive and well, as is "BIG BROTHER" in this current day small town thriller.

Amidst the moss covered oaks, eccentric characters from the wealthy to the classless, lurk in the shadows at every corner propelling the reader foward, hanging on everyword.

With a plot rich in deception and cover-up, Case has managed to weave fact into believable fiction. The use of eyewitness accounts as well as governmental documents in section one plants a seed of reality so indelible one has trouble separating the two.

Undoubtedly this work will rekindle a roaring blaze in the voice of the civil rights activests. Aided by public awareness and desire for the truth, expect intense investigations to soon follow. THIS CAN NOT BE IGNORED.

Should this atrocity be proven true, we may all find ourselves questioning our leaders and once again asking...... "at what price does freedom come."

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An American Holocaust...?, November 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Slaughter: An American Atrocity (Hardcover)

I've read the 1-star reviews, which are almost vitriolic in their negation of this atrocity. They seem proof that we're a generation of the less curious and the less concerned, not to mention the truly jaded. But if you've walked the streets as a person of color, you know "The Slaughter" may indeed be fact, not emotional fiction. Truth can be stranger than fiction... AND there are many things the government (American or not) would rather not reveal. Look how we've forgotten history -- altered or not, believed or not: 6 million Jews, Eastern Europeans and homosexuals exterminated in concentration camps. And the martyrs of the 60s: Are the lives of countless civil rights workers, JFK, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Malcom X and that generation who never returned from Viet Nam, only to be remembered when a point needs to be made? How many books have been written (and negated) on a truth "better left unsaid," according to some nay-sayers? And let's not get started on the terrors in the 80s -- South Africa, Bosnia....

Face it, the human beast is capable tremendous beauty and unbelieveable tragedy. The truth will out as it may.