Our Town

Starred review from October 3, 2005
Former Village Voice
arts writer Carr has crafted a searing look at race in America that combines investigative journalism with an intensely personal family history. She uses the 1930 lynching of two African-American men in Marion, Ind., where her father and grandfather grew up, as a prism to examine not only the psychology of the lynch mob members but the thousands of bystanders, some of whom were immortalized in a revolting and haunting photograph, which shows townspeople gathering to stare at the mutilated corpses, still dangling from their nooses.
Carr's discovery that her beloved grandfather belonged to the Ku Klux Klan and may have been involved in the hate crime leads her to return to Marion and ask questions that many on both sides of the racial divide find uncomfortable. Carr's sense that she bears—that we all bear—a burden of guilt allows her an empathy that enables her to gain access to present-day Klan members, who talk freely about their ideology; her refusal to view herself as morally superior to them lends power to her observations, and her lack of self-righteousness is refreshing.
This outstanding narrative is an excellent companion to last year's Blood Done Sign My Name
and Arc of Justice
, which also used a crime as an entry point into the struggle for civil rights. With the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe reviving the debate on the state of race relations in this country, this book will have an extra topicality in addition to its narrative power that should deservedly attract a wide audience. 8 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW
. Agent, Joy Harris.

Starred review from February 15, 2006
Journalist Carr has written a stunning book that is part history, part reportage, part detective story, and part personal quest. A native of Marion, IN, she has been fascinated by, even obsessed with, the infamous lynching of two black youths in her hometown in August 1930 ever since she saw the famous photograph of a crowd gathered around the dangling bodies. Because her grandfather was a member of the KKK, she felt a personal need to get to the bottom of the case, discover its details, and examine its continuing impact. Her research combines interviews, archival finds, and personal soul-searching; her sources range from eyewitnesses to current KKK members to white and black townspeople. The book -s main character, however, is the town of Marion itself as it struggles to deal with the stain of the past. This beautifully written, detail-filled work brings together the historical and personal in a powerful and moving fashion and belongs on the shelves of every U.S. library." -Anthony O. Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, IN"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2006
Marion, Indiana, was the site of a lynching in 1930 that was immortalized in photos of white townsfolk--men, women, and children--looking on, reflecting a complex range of responses from festive to shock. Carr, a journalist, was raised in Marion, and as a child she heard discussions that piqued her interest. Later, she discovered that her grandfather had been an active member of the Klan during the period of the lynching. She uncovers secrets, both familial and national, surrounding troubled race relations. Those she was able to interview include James Cameron, who survived the lynching and later created the Black Holocaust Museum; Cameron's nephew, a Marion police detective, who sought to investigate the lynching; and the former mayor, now 90 years old. Carr also found a black community not as oppressed as the lynching would seem to indicate. Carr's Marion, with its family and racial secrets, provides a glimpse at a complex America, not so distant in our past that its ghosts aren't capable of haunting us today.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)