EBOOK
A Shot in the Moonlight
How a Freed Slave and a Confederate Soldier Fought for Justice in the Jim Crow South
Ben Montgomery(0)
About
The little-known true story of George Dinning, a freed slave, and Colonel Bennett H. Young, a Confederate war hero, who in 1899 joined forces to take on a Kentucky mob in court after Dinning was beaten almost to death for defending his farm against white attackers.
After moonrise on the cold night of January 21, 1897, a mob of twenty five white men gathered in a patch of woods near Big Road in southwestern Simpson County, Kentucky. Half carried rifles and shotguns, and a few tucked pistols in their pants. Their target? George Dinning, a freed slave who'd farmed peacefully in the area for 14 years, and had been wrongfully accused of stealing livestock from a neighboring farm. When the mob began firing through the doors and windows of Dinning's house, he fired back in self-defense, shooting and killing the son of a wealthy Kentucky family.
So began one of the strangest legal episodes in American history - one that ended with Dinning becoming the first black man in America to win damages after a wrongful murder conviction.
Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material, bestselling author Ben Montgomery resurrects this dramatic and largely forgotten story, and the unusual convergence of characters - among them a Confederate war hero-turned-lawyer named Bennett H. Young, Kentucky governor William O'Connell Bradley, and George Dinning himself - that allowed this thrilling but unlikely story of justice to unfold in a time and place where justice was all too rare.
After moonrise on the cold night of January 21, 1897, a mob of twenty five white men gathered in a patch of woods near Big Road in southwestern Simpson County, Kentucky. Half carried rifles and shotguns, and a few tucked pistols in their pants. Their target? George Dinning, a freed slave who'd farmed peacefully in the area for 14 years, and had been wrongfully accused of stealing livestock from a neighboring farm. When the mob began firing through the doors and windows of Dinning's house, he fired back in self-defense, shooting and killing the son of a wealthy Kentucky family.
So began one of the strangest legal episodes in American history - one that ended with Dinning becoming the first black man in America to win damages after a wrongful murder conviction.
Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material, bestselling author Ben Montgomery resurrects this dramatic and largely forgotten story, and the unusual convergence of characters - among them a Confederate war hero-turned-lawyer named Bennett H. Young, Kentucky governor William O'Connell Bradley, and George Dinning himself - that allowed this thrilling but unlikely story of justice to unfold in a time and place where justice was all too rare.