They Got Daddy, livre ebook

An unforgettable journey through racism and faith across the generations.

January 15, 1959—a day that changed one family forever. White supremacists kidnapped and severely beat rural Alabama preacher Israel Page, nearly killing him because he had sued a White sheriff's deputy for injuries suffered in a car crash. After "they" "got Daddy," Israel Page's children began leaving the Jim Crow South, the event leaving an indelible mark on the family and its future. Decades later, the events of that day fueled journalist Sharon Tubbs's epic quest to learn who had "gotten" her mother's daddy and why.

They Got Daddy follows Tubbs on her moving journey from Fort Wayne, Indiana, to the back roads and rural churches of Alabama. A powerful revelation of the sustaining and redemptive power of faith and unflinching testimony to the deeply embedded effects of racism across the generations, it demonstrates how the search for the truth can offer a chance at true healing.

Decades had passed since I got the first hint that something illegal, something tragic, had happened to my grandfather. Back then, I was a little girl in the latter stages of elementary school, living in my childhood home in Fort Wayne, Indiana. My mother and I sat on the couch watching the TV news, and a cloud of silly dunce caps paraded across the screen. The Ku Klux Klan had a permit to march somewhere in the state. This was the 1980s. I thought of nice white teachers, guidance counselors, and classmates at school, so the news story confused me. White people still hated Black people? The KKK, those scary men with the white sheets from the Black history movies—those people still exist? For sure, Mama said. And that's when it slipped out of her, almost like a distant memory: "They got Daddy."

Introduction
1. Gone, Just Gone
2. History Breathes Again
3. Drilling Deep
4. Migrating to a New Life
5. Getting Religion
6. A Different Kind of Shout
7. Policing Moonshine and Murder
8. A Country Lawyer
9. Good Times Meets the Brady Bunch
10. A Black Man's Capital Crime
11. He Was That
12. Fake Preachers and Winding Roads
13. The Klan and Me
14. Faith vs. Fear
15. Turning Mess into Ministry
16. Vengeance Is His
Notes