Down Along with That Devil's Bones
A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy
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Narrated by:
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Geoffrey Cantor
About this listen
“We can no longer see ourselves as minor spectators or weary watchers of history after finishing this astonishing work of nonfiction.”—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy
Connor Towne O’Neill’s journey onto the battlefield of white supremacy began with a visit to Selma, Alabama, in 2015. There he had a chance encounter with a group of people preparing to erect a statue to celebrate the memory of Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the most notorious Confederate generals, a man whom Union general William Tecumseh Sherman referred to as “that devil.” After that day in Selma, O’Neill, a white Northerner transplanted to the South, decided to dig deeply into the history of Forrest and other monuments to him throughout the South, which, like Confederate monuments across America, have become flashpoints in the fight against racism.
Forrest was not just a brutal general, O’Neill learned; he was a slave trader and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. O’Neill encountered citizens who still hold Forrest in cult-like awe, desperate to preserve what they call their “heritage,” and he also talked to others fighting to tear the monuments down. In doing so he discovered a direct line from Forrest’s ugly history straight to the heart of the battles raging today all across America. The fight over Forrest reveals a larger battle, one meant to sustain white supremacy—a system that props up all white people, not just those defending the monuments. With clear-eyed passion and honest introspection, O’Neill takes listeners on a journey to understand the many ways in which the Civil War, begun in 1860, has never ended.
A brilliant and provocative blend of history, reportage, and personal essay, Down Along with That Devil’s Bones presents an important and eye-opening account of how we got from Appomattox to Charlottesville, and of our vital need to confront our past in order to transcend it and move toward a more just society.
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“The truth is that we Southerners have always needed dedicated, self-reflective young folks from the North guided by genius and radical love to help us exorcise the worst parts of our region. Connor Towne O’Neill walks in that radical love tradition in Down Along with That Devil’s Bones, but he does something more here. He decimates the argument for our need of Confederate statues while chronicling what their existence grants him bodily and morally.”—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy
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Performance
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In the early morning of June 1, 1921, a White mob marched across the train tracks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and into its predominantly Black Greenwood District - a thriving, affluent neighborhood known as America's Black Wall Street. They brought with them firearms, gasoline, and explosives. In a few short hours, they'd razed 35 square blocks to the ground, leaving hundreds dead. The Tulsa Race Massacre is one of the most devastating acts of racial violence in US history. But how did it come to pass?
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Incredible story and sooo well written
- By Deby on 02-17-22
By: Brandy Colbert
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His Truth Is Marching On
- John Lewis and the Power of Hope
- By: Jon Meacham, John Lewis - afterword
- Narrated by: JD Jackson, Jon Meacham
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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An intimate and revealing portrait of civil rights icon and longtime US congressman John Lewis, linking his life to the painful quest for justice in America from the 1950s to the present - from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of America.
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Absolutely remarkable!
- By Janie on 08-30-20
By: Jon Meacham, and others
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Learning from the Germans
- Race and the Memory of Evil
- By: Susan Neiman
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 20 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman's Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights-era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin.
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This is an important book.
- By Amazon Customer on 05-29-20
By: Susan Neiman
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The Broken Heart of America
- St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States
- By: Walter Johnson
- Narrated by: Jamie Renell
- Length: 15 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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From Lewis and Clark's 1804 expedition to the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, American history has been made in St. Louis. And as Walter Johnson shows in this searing book, the city exemplifies how imperialism, racism, and capitalism have persistently entwined to corrupt the nation's past. St. Louis was a staging post for Indian removal and imperial expansion, and its wealth grew on the backs of its poor Black residents, from slavery through redlining and urban renewal.
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Sad & True,With Fascinating Facts of St.Louis Past
- By Ron G on 04-26-20
By: Walter Johnson
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Life of a Klansman
- A Family History in White Supremacy
- By: Edward Ball
- Narrated by: Edward Ball
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Life of a Klansman tells the story of a warrior in the Ku Klux Klan, a carpenter in Louisiana who took up the cause of fanatical racism during the years after the Civil War. Edward Ball, a descendant of the Klansman, paints a portrait of his family’s anti-Black militant that is part history, part memoir rich in personal detail.
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Thought Provoking, But . . .
- By William G. Stuart on 09-01-20
By: Edward Ball
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Forget the Alamo
- The Rise and Fall of an American Myth
- By: Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, Jason Stanford
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Every nation needs its creation myth, and since Texas was a nation before it was a state, it's no surprise that its myths bite deep. There's no piece of history more important to Texans than the Battle of the Alamo, when Davy Crockett and a band of rebels went down in a blaze of glory fighting for independence from Mexico, losing the battle but setting Texas up to win the war.
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A way forward for reconciling objective reality
- By Josh Berthume on 06-19-21
By: Bryan Burrough, and others
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The Ground Breaking
- An American City and Its Search for Justice
- By: Scott Ellsworth
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the course of less than 24 hours in the spring of 1921, Tulsa’s infamous “Black Wall Street” was wiped off the map - and erased from the history books. Official records were disappeared, researchers were threatened, and the worst single incident of racial violence in American history was kept hidden for more than 50 years. But there were some secrets that would not die. A riveting and essential new book, The Ground Breaking not only tells the long-suppressed story of the notorious Tulsa race massacre.
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Excellent book on the Tulsa Massacre
- By vivabooks on 08-15-21
By: Scott Ellsworth
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The President and the Freedom Fighter
- Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Their Battle to Save America's Soul
- By: Brian Kilmeade
- Narrated by: Brian Kilmeade
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The New York Times best-selling author of George Washington's Secret Six and Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates turns to two other heroes of the nation: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. In The President and the Freedom Fighter, Brian Kilmeade tells the little-known story of how two American heroes moved from strong disagreement to friendship, and in the process changed the entire course of history.
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Great Story and Research
- By Marla O'Halloran on 11-06-21
By: Brian Kilmeade
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Righteous Troublemakers
- Untold Stories of the Social Justice Movement in America
- By: Al Sharpton
- Narrated by: Al Sharpton
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Righteous Troublemakers shines a light on everyday people called to do extraordinary things—like Pauli Murray, whose early work inspired Thurgood Marshall, Claudette Colvin, who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus months before Rosa Parks did the same, and Gwen Carr, whose private pain in losing her son Eric Garner stoked her public activism against police brutality. Sharpton also gives his personal take on more widely known individuals, revealing overlooked details, historical connections, and a perspective informed by years of working in the social justice movement.
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Thank God for this book knowledge is power
- By JOAN REID on 02-23-22
By: Al Sharpton
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Denmark Vesey's Garden
- Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy
- By: Ethan J. Kytle, Blain Roberts
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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A book that strikes at the heart of the recent flare-ups over Confederate symbols in Charlottesville, New Orleans, and elsewhere, Denmark Vesey's Garden reveals the deep roots of these controversies and traces them to the heart of slavery in the United States: Charleston, South Carolina, where almost half of the US slave population stepped onto our shores, where the first shot at Fort Sumter began the Civil War, and where Dylann Roof shot nine people at Emanuel A.M.E. Church, the congregation of Denmark Vesey, a black revolutionary who plotted a massive slave insurrection.
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Timely, well-written and enlightening.
- By DG on 06-05-18
By: Ethan J. Kytle, and others
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30 Days a Black Man
- The Forgotten Story That Exposed the Jim Crow South
- By: Bill Steigerwald, Juan Williams - foreword
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1948 most White people in the North had no idea how unjust and unequal daily life was for the 10 million African Americans living in the South. But that suddenly changed after Ray Sprigle, a famous White journalist from Pittsburgh, went undercover and lived as a Black man in the Jim Crow South. Escorted through the South's parallel Black society by John Wesley Dobbs, a historic Black civil rights pioneer from Atlanta, Sprigle met with sharecroppers, local Black leaders, and families of lynching victims.
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Review review
- By bill steigerwald on 12-13-20
By: Bill Steigerwald, and others
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Big Wonderful Thing
- By: Stephen Harrigan
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 28 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of Texas is the story of struggle and triumph in a land of extremes. It is a story of drought and flood, invasion and war, boom and bust, and of the myriad peoples who, over centuries of conflict, gave rise to a place that has helped shape the identity of the United States and the destiny of the world.
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Guidall is in top form with very good material
- By Elizabeth on 12-22-19
By: Stephen Harrigan