A Time to Kill (Jake Brigance, #1)
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Read between February 21 - April 5, 2019
12%
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Feds spent three weeks puttin’ on proof, and the jury stayed out twenty-seven minutes and returned with the two most precious words in the Afro-English language—‘Not guilty.’
17%
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but rumors of additional gunmen surfaced and flourished until one table at the Tea Shoppe had a whole band of wild niggers in on the attack.
17%
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At ten Wednesday morning, in a no-frills double service at the funeral home, the rednecks buried their dead.
17%
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The men talked about niggers in general, and chewed Red Man and sipped whiskey, and reminisced about the other days when niggers knew their place.
27%
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He had plenty of women. Why would he rape a little nigger girl? And if he did, what was the big deal?
29%
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She had visited on Sunday and cried for an hour. Panic was a part of her life, her makeup, her composition. But he knew they were broke and she was scared. Her family would be of little help, maybe some vegetables from the garden and a few bucks for milk and eggs. When it came to funerals and hospital stays they were very dependable. They were generous and gave of their time freely to wail and moan and put on a show. But when real money was needed they scattered like chickens. He had little use for her family, and his wasn’t much better.
34%
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Blacks are so unpredictable, especially when they’re in trouble.
40%
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Too much ignorance and poverty. He didn’t mind the racism; it wasn’t as bad as it once was and he was accustomed to it. It would always be there, but gradually becoming less visible. The whites still owned and controlled everything, and that in itself was not unbearable. It was not about to change. What he found intolerable was the ignorance and stark poverty of many of the blacks; the dilapidated, shotgun houses, the high infant mortality rate, the hopelessly unemployed, the unwed mothers and their unfed babies. It was depressing to the point of being intolerable,
51%
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They wished they were alone with him, with no white folks around. They could talk to him like he was a nigger.
55%
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where the women from sorority row plastered their beautiful, bronze bodies with oil and sweated in the sun and coolly ignored the catcalls from the drunken law students and fraternity rats.
55%
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Now that he had an income he worried constantly about mortgages, the overhead, credit cards, and realizing the American dream of becoming affluent. Not wealthy, just affluent.
55%
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He wanted a wife who would stay home and stay beautiful and have babies and not try to wear the pants. It was love at first sight.
56%
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Why? That was always the question the next morning. Why did he do it? A cold beer was refreshing. Maybe two or three. But ten, fifteen, even twenty? He had lost count. After six, beer lost its taste, and from then on the drinking was just for the sake of drinking and getting drunk.
56%
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He stood, carefully, slowly, retardedly, and crept into the kitchen.
62%
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When we catch a rapist around here, especially a nigger, we generally lock him up.
62%
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Suppose this nigger gets off, walks out of the courthouse a free man. Ever body in the country will know it, and the niggers will go crazy. Evertime somebody crosses a nigger, he’ll just kill him, then say he was insane, and try to get off. That’s what’s dangerous about this trial.”
63%
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It was predominantly elderly, but there were many younger, militant, angry-looking blacks who had missed the great civil rights marches and demonstrations of the sixties and now realized that this might be a rare opportunity to shout and protest and sing “We Shall Overcome,” and in general celebrate being black and oppressed in a white world.
63%
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an eloquent, alliterative oratorical fiesta
65%
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Niggers could march and demonstrate all day long and no one cared.
65%
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roving bands of young wild nigger punks.
65%
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wild niggers!
68%
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“Because men don’t have female friends. No way. I don’t know of a single man in the entire South who is married and has a female friend. I think it goes back to the Civil War.” “I think it goes back to the Dark Ages. Why are Southern women so jealous?”
72%
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It was okay to be afraid—just don’t show it.
93%
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and by noon you won’t be able to stir niggers with a stick