Daniel Kleven > Recent Status Updates

Just finished chapter 1, and am realizing why JMW was a GIANT in the field of Black Baptist history (or just Black history, period). Careful scholar, loaded with insights -- I can already tell this is going to be one of the best books of the year.

"There's this thing called the Blue Wall of Silence in the police world. It means all cops are brothers and sisters and should never betray one another. You swear it in your heart when you become a cop. It's not written anywhere, you just know it."

This book is so, so good -- maybe favorite of JW's so far (and that's saying something!)

I LOVE this book

Excellent introduction by Nathan Finn.

I don't think this is a spoiler, because you find out in chapter 1 that Toswiah's dad was a police officer, and then something happened so that her family was "forced to move to a new place and change their identities."

This book was written 20 years ago (2002), but with issues with police accountability on front page headlines, not least right here in Minneapolis, this book is as timely as ever. Powerful.

Wallace was born in 1827 in Indiana; became a Union general in the Civil War; served on the military commission for the trials of the Lincoln assassination conspirators; also the trial of Henry Wirz, Confederate commandant of the Andersonville prison camp; was governor of New Mexico; served as U.S. minister to the Ottoman Empire.

Oh, and he also wrote "the most influential Christian book of the 19th century."