To Poison a Nation
The Murder of Robert Charles and the Rise of Jim Crow Policing in America
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Narrated by:
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Victor Love
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By:
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Andrew Baker
About this listen
An explosive, long-forgotten story of police violence that exposes the historical roots of today’s criminal justice crisis
“A deeply researched and propulsively written story of corrupt governance, police brutality, Black resistance, and violent white reaction in turn-of-the-century New Orleans that holds up a dark mirror to our own times.” - Walter Johnson, author of River of Dark Dreams
On a steamy Monday evening in 1900, New Orleans police officers confronted a black man named Robert Charles as he sat on a doorstep in a working-class neighborhood where racial tensions were running high. What happened next would trigger the largest manhunt in the city’s history, while white mobs took to the streets, attacking and murdering innocent black residents during three days of bloody rioting. Finally cornered, Charles exchanged gunfire with the police in a spectacular gun battle witnessed by thousands.
Building outwards from these dramatic events, To Poison a Nation connects one city’s troubled past to the modern crisis of white supremacy and police brutality. Historian Andrew Baker immerses listeners in a boisterous world of disgruntled laborers, crooked machine bosses, scheming businessmen, and the black radical who tossed a flaming torch into the powder keg. Baker recreates a city that was home to the nation’s largest African American community, a place where racial antagonism was hardly a foregone conclusion - but which ultimately became the crucible of a novel form of racialized violence: modern policing.
A major work of history, To Poison a Nation reveals disturbing connections between the Jim Crow past and police violence in our own times.
©2021 by Andrew Baker. (P)2021 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
After World War I, black Americans fervently hoped for a new epoch of peace, prosperity, and equality. Black soldiers believed their participation in the fight to make the world safe for democracy finally earned them rights they had been promised since the close of the Civil War. Instead, an unprecedented wave of anti-black riots and lynchings swept the country. From April to November of 1919, the racial unrest rolled across the South into the North and the Midwest, even to the nation's capital. Red Summer is the first narrative history about this epic encounter.
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Better Understand 2019 by Looking Closely at 1919
- By JAS on 03-27-19
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Set the Night on Fire
- L.A. in the Sixties
- By: Mike Davis, Jon Wiener
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 25 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Los Angeles in the '60s was a hotbed of political and social upheaval. The city was a launchpad for Black Power - where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation. The city was home to the Chicano Blowouts and Chicano Moratorium, as well as being the birthplace of “Asian American” as a political identity. It was a locus of the antiwar movement, gay liberation movement, and women’s movement, and, of course, the capital of California counterculture.
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An amazingly comprehensive story of a critical decade.
- By Manifesta on 11-29-20
By: Mike Davis, and others
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City of Scoundrels
- The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago
- By: Gary Krist
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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When 1919 began, the city of Chicago seemed on the verge of transformation. Modernizers had an audacious, expensive plan to turn the city from a brawling, unglamorous place into "the Metropolis of the World". But just as the dream seemed within reach, pandemonium broke loose and the city’s highest ambitions were suddenly under attack by the same unbridled energies that had given birth to them in the first place.
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Great History of a Great City
- By Cookie on 08-30-12
By: Gary Krist
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Jesse James
- Last Rebel of the Civil War
- By: T. J. Stiles
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 18 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In this brilliant biography T. J. Stiles offers a new understanding of the legendary outlaw Jesse James. Although he has often been portrayed as a Robin Hood of the old west, in this ground-breaking work Stiles places James within the context of the bloody conflicts of the Civil War to reveal a much more complicated and significant figure.
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Borderline woke retelling of the era JJ live in
- By Rodney on 08-24-22
By: T. J. Stiles
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The Dead Are Arising
- The Life of Malcolm X
- By: Les Payne, Tamara Payne
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 18 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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An epic biography of Malcolm X finally emerges, drawing on hundreds of hours of the author's interviews, rewriting much of the known narrative.
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Much more depth than the Haley book.
- By CapitalHeel on 11-03-20
By: Les Payne, and others
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The Violence Inside Us
- A Brief History of an Ongoing American Tragedy
- By: Chris Murphy
- Narrated by: Chris Murphy
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Is America destined to always be a violent nation? This sweeping history by U.S. senator Chris Murphy explores the origins of our violent impulses, the roots of our obsession with firearms, and the mythologies that prevent us from confronting our national crisis. In many ways, the United States sets the pace for other nations to follow. Yet on the most important human concern - the need to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe from physical harm - America isn’t a leader.
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America needs more white men like Chris Murphy.
- By jnlv68 on 09-20-20
By: Chris Murphy
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The Year of Dangerous Days
- Riots, Refugees, and Cocaine in Miami 1980
- By: Nicholas Griffin
- Narrated by: Pete Simonelli
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of The Wire, the “utterly absorbing” (The New York Times) story of the cinematic transformation of Miami, one of America’s bustling cities - rife with a drug epidemic, a burgeoning refugee crisis, and police brutality - from journalist and award-winning author Nicholas Griffin.
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Forty Years Ago or Yesterday?
- By Anka on 07-20-20
By: Nicholas Griffin
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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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Death in the Haymarket
- A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America
- By: James Green
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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On May 4, 1886, a bomb exploded at a Chicago labor rally, wounding dozens of policemen, seven of whom eventually died. A wave of mass hysteria swept the country, leading to a sensational trial that culminated in four controversial executions and dealt a blow to the labor movement from which it would take decades to recover. Historian James Green recounts the rise of the first great labor movement in the wake of the Civil War and brings to life an epic 20-year struggle for the eight-hour workday.
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A must for anyone who enjoys labor history
- By Taurus on 01-10-22
By: James Green
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The Kosher Capones
- A History of Chicago’s Jewish Gangsters
- By: Joe Kraus
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The Kosher Capones tells the fascinating story of Chicago’s Jewish gangsters from Prohibition into the 1980s. Author Joe Kraus traces these gangsters through the lives, criminal careers, and conflicts of Benjamin “Zukie the Bookie” Zuckerman, last of the independent West Side Jewish bosses, and Lenny Patrick, eventual head of the Syndicate’s “Jewish wing.”
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Kind of scattered
- By joey carbo on 10-04-21
By: Joe Kraus
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Black Detroit
- A People's History of Self-Determination
- By: Herb Boyd
- Narrated by: James Shippy
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The author of Baldwin's Harlem looks at the evolving culture, politics, economics, and spiritual life of Detroit - a blend of memoir, love letter, history, and clear-eyed reportage that explores the city's past, present, and future and its significance to the African American legacy and the nation's fabric.
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Selective Recall
- By Rick on 07-19-17
By: Herb Boyd
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God's Hand on America
- Divine Providence in the Modern Era
- By: Michael Medved
- Narrated by: Michael Medved
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Has God withdrawn his special blessing from the United States? Americans ponder that painful question in troubled times, as we did during the devastation of the Civil War and after the assassinations of the '60s, and as we do in our present polarization. Yet, somehow - on battlefields, across western wilderness, and in raucous convention halls - astounding events have reliably advanced America, restoring faith in the Republic’s providential protection. In this provocative historical narrative, Michael Medved brings to life 10 haunting tales that reveal this purposeful pattern.
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Every American is so fortunate
- By Anonymous User on 06-23-20
By: Michael Medved
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Beale Street Dynasty
- Sex, Song, and the Struggle for the Soul of Memphis
- By: Preston Lauterbach
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Following the Civil War, Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, thrived as a cauldron of sex and song, violence and passion. But out of this turmoil emerged a center of black progress, optimism, and cultural ferment. Preston Lauterbach tells this vivid, fascinating story through the multigenerational saga of a family whose ambition, race pride, and moral complexity indelibly shaped the city that would loom so large in American life.
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Narration Speed...It's Half the Battle
- By B. Westman on 03-21-17
What listeners say about To Poison a Nation
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Charlotte Richardson
- 03-19-22
A Very Interesting Story
This is a very interesting story. Sadly, things have not changed. I would suggest this book and this Audible book. The narrator was great.
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