Black Hearts White Minds by Mitch Margo
The year is 1964 and Carl Gordon is an ill-prepared New York Assistant U.S. Attorney who has lied his way into a transfer to Stockville, Alabama, where he is supposed to monitor and enforce the Civil Rights Act. In a matter of days, the Ku Klux Klan takes aim at him, the outside agitator. Although scrambling just to protect himself and his 12-year-old son, Carl agrees to represent Oleatha Geary, a black family matriarch who has, through a series of unlikely events, inherited a splendid mansion in an all-white, race-restricted neighborhood. At the same time, a forbidden romance between Carl and Oleatha’s daughter, Lenore, shocks everyone, black and white. Within a few weeks, Carl and Oleatha are engulfed in litigation that turns deadly, as Stockville’s white political establishment is hell-bent on keeping segregation alive.