Burden
Subtitle: a preacher, a klansman, and a true story of redemption in the modern South
By: Courtney Hargrave
Edition: First edition.
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 227
ISBN-13: 9781984823335
Subjects: Race relations; White supremacy movements; Ku Klux Klan (1915- )
Description: "A harrowing true story of the modern Ku Klux Klan and an act of grace that shook a community in the Deep South. In 1996, the town of Laurens, South Carolina, was thrust into the international spotlight when a white supremacist named Michael Burden opened a museum celebrating the Ku Klux Klan on the community's main square. Journalists and protestors flooded the town, and hate groups rallied to the establishment's defense, dredging up the long history of racial violence in this formerly prosperous mill town. What came next is the subject of an upcoming major motion picture starring Forest Whitaker, Garrett Hedlund, Tom Wilkinson, Andrea Riseborough, and Usher Raymond. Shortly after his museum opened, Michael Burden abruptly left the Klan at the urging of a woman he fell in love with. Broke and homeless, he was taken in by Reverend David Kennedy, an African American preacher and leader in the Laurens community, who plunged his church headlong in a quest to save their former enemy. In this spellbinding Southern epic, journalist Courtney Hargrave uncovers the complex events behind the story told in the film, exploring the choices that led to Kennedy and Burden's friendship, the social factors that drive young men to join hate groups, the intersection of poverty and racism in the divided South, and the difference one person can make in confronting America's oldest sin"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-227).
Table of contents: title: Foreword / by Andrew Heckler; title: Prologue: This is what we'll do; title: The mask that grins and lies; title: A kernel of truth; title: The perfect recruit; title: Burn it down; title: Non silba sed anthar; title: "Choose"; title: This new beginning, ain't it?; title: "Let's talk business"; title: The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.