02976cam a2200349 i 4500 1906844035 TxAuBib 20250225120000.0 241116s2025||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 9781324036548 HRD 37.99 1324036540 HRD 37.99 (OCoLC)1472115109 TxAuBib rda Snyder, Brad, 1972- You can't kill a man because of the books he reads [BOOK] : Angelo Herndon's fight for free speech / Brad Snyder. You cannot kill a man because of the books he reads. Angelo Herndon's fight for free speech. First edition. New York : W. W. Norton & Company, [2025] ©2025. xv, 318 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Includes bibliographical references and index,. "The story of a young, Black Communist Party organizer and the landmark case that made him a civil rights hero. In 1932, eighteen-year-old Black Communist Party organizer Angelo Herndon was arrested, had his rooms illegally searched, and his radical literature seized. He was charged with attempting to incite insurrection--a crime punishable by death. You Can't Kill a Man Because of the Books He Reads chronicles Herndon's five-year quest for freedom during a time when Blacks, white liberals, and the radical left joined forces to define the nation's commitment to civil rights and civil liberties. Herndon's champions included the young, Black Harvard Law School-educated attorney Benjamin J. Davis Jr.; the future historian C. Vann Woodward, who joined the interracial Herndon defense committee; the white-shoe New York lawyer Whitney North Seymour, who argued Herndon's appeals; and literary friends Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright. With their support, Herndon won his freedom and reinvented himself as a Harlem literary star until a dramatic fall from grace. A legal odyssey of Herndon’s narrow escape from certain death because of his unpopular political beliefs, You Can’t Kill a Man Because of the Books He Reads explores Herndon’s journey from Alabama coal miner to Communist Party organizer to Harlem hero and beyond. Brad Snyder tells the stories of the diverse coalition of people who rallied to his cause and who twice appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. They forced the Court to recognize free speech and peaceable assembly as essential rights in a democracy―a landmark decision in 1930s America as well as today.". 20250225. Herndon, Angelo, 1913-1997. Freedom of speech. Civil rights. Discrimination in law enforcement United States History.