Wells, a writer turned revolutionary who believed mere protests were not enough to challenge entrenched racist practices like Jim Crow, Black Codes and lynching, and whose bold actions laid the groundwork for a century of black American activism.
Tell us what you like and we'll recommend books you'll love. Sign up and get a free ebook! Table of Contents Excerpt Rave and Reviews. About The Book. Williams lived in a city that was not meant for him.
It was designed as a haven for godly and wealthy white people. The purest air in the bluest sky, the gentlest spray from a perfect ocean, wide boulevards and candy-colored homes—the very best America.
This was how both he and the city wanted it. Williams took all kinds of jobs—chopping wood, painting houses, corralling hogs and cows for widows. He did these jobs and then he was gone, to somewhere on the edges of town. He was not from Asbury Park, or even New Jersey. Williams confessed to larceny and served eighteen months in state prison.
He served a separate, shorter stretch for being drunk and disorderly. That is, until an unspeakable crime happened in the fall of , and Tom Williams became someone in Asbury Park.
Wherever he went, Williams carried with him the long, heavy history of racism in America, and in no part of his life would have been unaffected by it. Education, land ownership, voting rights, due process, equality, self-determination—Williams would have been guaranteed none of these. By , black people had been free from bondage for forty-five years, but the dark-hearted mentality behind slavery remained in place, not in the corners and fringes of the country but on its main streets and in its town halls and courtrooms.
One race fought steadily and openly to keep another race as near to a state of subjugation as possible. The weapons used—black codes, Jim Crow, disenfranchisement, segregation, lynching—were insidious, suppressive, and terrorizing. Black landowners lost billions in wealth as white mobs drove them from their homes and stole their land from beneath them. They were often alone in this fight, but not always. The story of Tom Williams is also the story of two individuals, a man and a woman, one white, one black, born at different times in different parts of the country, fated never to meet but linked by a passion for justice, and by a single legal case in a town called Asbury Park.
One of them, Raymond C. Schindler, was a cerebral private detective who never once shot a gun or even carried one, the son of a preacher and a prison librarian, a believer in redemption but relentless in pursuit of the criminals who needed it—a gentleman bloodhound. The other was Ida B.
Wells, a black woman born a slave and driven by personal tragedy, a crusader against racism and a champion of her race, barely five feet tall but towering in her righteousness and influence—the most famous black woman of her time.
Schindler was a raw-boned rookie only a few years out of high school when he crossed paths with Tom Williams; by then, Wells had been an activist and reformer for decades. Schindler came to know the dark corners of Asbury Park; Wells never set foot there. Today, they are not linked in any textbooks, or in any telling of the crime and its aftermath.
Yet both Ray Schindler and Ida B. Wells, in their resolute pursuit of equal justice for all, emphatically answered the question posed to every citizen, every day—what kind of America do we wish to live in?
Their efforts demonstrated the power of an individual—a single, steadfast warrior—to collide with history and meaningfully shift its course. Their separate heroism, in the form of small, principled decisions and actions, day after day, against all odds and resistance, in service to the unheralded and the vulnerable, had a clear impact on one specific case, but also helped give shape to an ongoing struggle that was bigger than any one man or crime.
Those events—and the moral audacity and persistence of Raymond Schindler and Ida B. Wells—are the story of this book. The man must be made to pay. When they found him and brought him in, some people had bad things to say about him. Emma Davison, a key witness in the sensational case that was to come, could recall only a single prior incident involving Tom Williams—an innocuous encounter relayed to her by her young son.
Beau Starr Corcoran as Corcoran. Angelo Tucci Rex as Rex. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. A Jewish woman from Detroit who became a boxing manager, guiding several major careers. This film focuses on her relationship with one boxer Epps , who's reportedly a composite of several including Toney, McKart and Hearns. Kallen eventually left her husband of 30 years, and moved to Los Angeles, becoming the commissioner of the International Female Boxers Association She gave the boxing world the one-two punch they never saw coming.
Biography Drama Romance Sport. Rated PG for crude language, violence, brief sensuality and some drug material. Did you know Edit.
Trivia Michelle Pfeiffer turned down the chance to star in this film because, at the time, the actress was in the process of relocating her family to Northern California. Goofs When Luther is having dinner with Jackie, he picks up his napkin twice. Quotes Jackie Kallen : All that plastic.
Connections Edited into Indie Film Cafe User reviews 55 Review. Top review. Million Dollar Baby, Not! While it doesn't break any ground in a sport that is seen here in a more glamorized way, the film presents us a woman determined to succeed at being a boxing promoter. In real life, Jackie Kallen has proved herself to be capable of handling fighters. Dutton, an actor himself, makes the best of the material Cheryl Edwards wrote, based on the real Jackie.
Jackie Kallen is a woman who knows a lot about boxing. When she spots the amazing Luther Shaw, she is determined to take him to the top. She realizes she has a thankless job, as she enters an area in sports totally dominated by men. Jackie is not a quitter, as she proves it to the boxing world and to herself.
While boxing drama has been dealt with in much better movies, we won't dwelt on it. Jackie Kallen, is played by Meg Ryan. She is at times annoying in her determination to go against the controlling mafia-like people in the business. Omar Epps, as the boxer, appears to do a fair job as a fighter that wants to go to the top of the heap.
Tony Shalhoub plays LaRocca, the man who would like to defeat Jackie and show her where she belongs, but she gets the last laugh! Dutton, as Felix, the trainer, doesn't have much to do. Timothy Daly, is Gavin, the man responsible for attracting attention to Luther because of his friendship with Jackie.
Watch this movie with open eyes. Details Edit. Release date February 20, United States. United States Germany. Official site.
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