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A visit to the site of Jordan’s murder
I made a promise to myself early on to be all in for this book-writing adventure, to embrace the discomfort of learning new skills. For example, I’ve had to think and rethink how to structure a 35,000-word story, how to create a worthy deck of PowerPoint slides, and how to master new computer programs. I
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Mosby chose to defend a corrupt vision
There are more than 8,000 graves in the Warrenton Cemetery, but none is as popular as the grave of Col. John S. Mosby. Mosby’s grave is a place of pilgrimage, a tribute to the famed soldier. And I don’t understand why. Mosby was a legendary Confederate cavalry officer, the “Gray Ghost,” whose guerrilla tactics bedeviled
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‘Night and Fog’ and Elvira Corder
When Steve Watkins described the German terror tactic, “Night and Fog,” I snapped to attention. Steve is a retired professor at the University of Mary Washington, the author of 12 books and a longtime friend. I sat beside his wife, Janet Watkins, for many years in the newsroom at the Free Lance-Star. Steve and I
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Two takeaways from the book’s launch
Sometimes I circle a distant date on my calendar, and it seems to never arrive. Monday, July 17, was such a date, and, praise be, it finally came. History Press has officially published my new book, Condemned for Love in Old Virginia: The Lynching of Arthur Jordan, and it’s now available from your favorite seller.
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Recipe for this book: Gather, write, bleed
I think of my new book as unique since it is the only writing project for which I spilled blood. It happened in western Maryland on a cold Sunday in December 2019. I was on a scouting trip for what would become Condemned for Love in Old Virginia, my new book. I had visited the
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Hoping readers enjoy a good mystery
One of the uncomfortable moments in a newspaper reporter’s life is when you’re out somewhere, say grocery shopping at Giant, and a reader approaches. “I liked your story about my mother,” the reader might say. When this happened to me, I braced because I could hear a “but” coming. “I liked your story about my
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Slavery and Nathan Corder
Nathan Corder was the person most responsible for Arthur Jordan’s murder. He was also an enslaver from a long line of enslavers. Was there a link between the two? Did Corder’s past lead to his later cruelty? In his 1845 autobiography, Frederick Douglass, a former enslaved person, said that slavery was harmful to both enslaver
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‘No requiem, save the night wind’
One of the many things that enraged civil right advocate Ida B. Wells about lynching was the lack of remembrance for the victims. For Wells, the deaths were bad enough, but the shame and terror that accompanied those deaths were worse. “They had no requiem, save the night wind, no memorial service to bemoan their
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I wish I’d said that
One of the curious aspects of book publishing occurs toward the end of the process, when the publisher sends you copies of the pages of your new book. The pages look exactly as they will in the finished book. The author’s job is to read them one more time and sign a statement saying that
Author & Lecturer
Jim Hall 