Harry N. MacLean ’64
The Past is Never Dead: The Trial of James Ford Seale and Mississippi’s Struggle for Redemption, by Harry Maclean, ’64. Hardcover, 288 pages, Basic Books, September 2009.
The Past is Never Dead recounts the complete 2007 trial of former Klansman James Ford Seale. Forty-three years after the 1964 murder of , two young black men, Charles Moore and Henry Dee, Seale was arrested for his role in the crime. He was charged with conspiracy and kidnapping in the murder and was tried in Jackson, Mississippi.
Maclean relates the story from various points of view. He shows Seale as a defendant through the eyes of others, including Thomas Moore, Charles Moore’s older brother, and Charles Edwards, a fellow Klansman involved in the crime. Edwards’ testimony was the main evidence used to convict Seale. Along with recreating the crime through his depiction of the trial, Maclean tells the story of Mississippi’s development and the state’s struggle to overcome its segregationist past. Maclean weaves the two stories together as he combines the story of Seale’s trial with the story of Mississippi’s troubled past.
In Broad Daylight, by Harry N. MacLean ’64. Paperback, 416 pages, St.
Martin Press, November 2006.
Harry MacLean is a lawyer and writer living in Denver. He has worked as a juvenile
court magistrate, first-assistant attorney general, associate professor of law,
general counsel of the Peace Corps, and labor arbitrator. His 1993 book, Once
Upon a Time: A True Story of Memory, Murder, and the Law, was selected as
a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times. He taught an Alumni College
course, “The
Art of Non-Fiction Narrative,” at Lawrence’s Reunion Weekend in 2004.
Ken Rex McElroy terrorized the residents of several counties in northwestern
Missouri for a score of years, and in 1981 he was killed by the men of Skidmore,
who closed ranks against all attempts to identify those who had actually pulled
the triggers.
When first published in 1989, In Broad Daylight won the Edgar Award
for Best True Crime, was on The New York Times bestseller list for 11 weeks,
sold
over
a million copies in paperback, and was made into an NBC Movie of the Week. Publishers
Weekly called it “an engrossing, credible examination of the way vigilante
action can take over when the law appears to be powerless.”
This edition, with a new epilogue containing additional information about the
identity of the killers drawn from police and FBI files, has been published to
commemorate the 25-year anniversary of the case.
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