Walker Reviews True-Crime Thriller The Rope for Washington Post
Writing, Literature, and Publishing professor Jerald Walker reviews bestselling author Alex Tresniowski’s new work, The Rope: A True Story of Murder, Heroism, and the Dawn of the NAACP, which recounts the murder of white ten-year-old Marie Smith in Asbury Park, New Jersey, in 1910 and the false accusations against a Black man.
The book examines racial tensions during the early 1900s and features the rise of Ida B. Wells to co-founder of the NAACP.
This outstanding, meticulously researched book will serve to commemorate [Marie Smith’s] stolen life, as well as the countless Black lives stolen by lynch mobs. Like the lynch mob that came for Tom Williams. Like the lynch mobs Ida B. Wells valiantly crusaded against. Like the lynch mob, in fact, that descended on our nation’s Capitol.
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