"The first sounds the prisoners heard were murmurs and bits of conversation. Beginning around 6:30 P. M.
on Thursday, August 7, 1930, the words grew louder as more and more people gathered on the sidewalk, street, and
yard in front of the Grant County Jail in Marion, Indiana, 'Get'em,' some shouted." "So begins James
H. Madison's gripping story about a hot summer evening in the Midwest, where three black teenagers, accused of
murdering a young white man and raping his white girlfriend, waited for justice in an Indiana jail. As the sun
set a mob dragged the three prisoners from the jail to the courthouse square and lynched two of them. No one in
Marion was ever punished for these murders." A Lynching in the Heartland is the story of that horrible night,
and how Marion's black and white citizens dealt with the tragedy. Yet Madison has written much more than a book
about lynching - this is a book about America's long and violent struggles with its color line.