Grif Stockley
Salted with Fire
When a black history professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock is found shot to death in his brother's home, his outspoken white rival on the faculty is charged with murder. The accused is Cormorant Ashley, a pontifical and politically incorrect historian who seems a likely suspect to all but his Delta-childhood chum, Miller Holly. Against his better judgment, Miller agrees to represent his old friend in the face of highly-publicized prosecution and, in the process, wonders if he has become the kind of Southern demagogue he has laways despised. (Rose Publishing Co., 2001)
Excerpt from Salted with FireI begin to move toward the jury rail and say, "Well, I disagree. This case is about your gut feeling about Cormorant Ashley. Is he a man of fundamental intellectual honesty and integrity who insists on speaking his mind, or is he some hot-headed peckerwood who would shoot and kill another man because of jealousy or racism or whatever motive the prosecutor offers you? I think Cormorant Ashley is guilty of being an arrogant, intellectual elitist who insists on embarrassing his colleagues and others with his politically incorrect notions, but most of all he is guilty of being honest. That, of course, is not a crime, but it is dangerous. Because the past has not been fair to African-Americans, and because many people in this country are watching this trial, some of you, consciously or unconsciously, may think you have to show that the South has changed, and that we can convict a white man accused of murdering a black person. This is one of the influences that we in our time have to contend with - our guilty feelings over our past treatment of African-Americans." |
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