Let My People Co. By Cedric Belfrage. (Gollancz. 75. 6d.)
GOT up like a squat and blurbless novel, this is in fact a most interesting and painful biography. There is a complete lack of documentation, but even though some of the personal details may be imaginative, the broad outline of the story and its background is indisputable. The Rev. Claude Williams was a Presbyterian minister in a small town in Arkansas during the great slump of ten years ago. Because he took up the cause of the hideously oppressed negroes and poor whites, he was attacked as a Communist and "trigger-lover." Because he would not truckle to the white bosses and local bullies, he was hounded out of town after town, aban- doned by his Church, starved, beaten up, arrested and imprisoned. His long martyrdom and his unflagging energy, his unquenchable courage and true Christianity are described powerfully and in detail. The account of conditions among the share-croppers and other works is appalling, though not, one suspects, exaggerated. This book is recommended to all who like to read true stories of heroism in the midst of darkness.
Previous page
