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Sign up todayConviction
The Murder Trial That Powered Thurgood Marshall’s Fight for Civil Rights
Narrator
Ron Butler
This audiobook uses AI narration.
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Length
6 hours 32 minutes
Language
English
On New Year’s Eve, 1939, a horrific triple murder occurred in rural Oklahoma. Within a matter of days, investigators identified several suspects: convicts who had been at a craps game with one of the victims the night before. Also at the craps game was a young black farmer named W. D. Lyons. As anger at authorities grew, political pressure mounted to find a villain. The governor’s representative settled on Lyons, who was arrested, tortured into signing a confession, and tried for the murder.
The NAACP’s new Legal Defense and Education Fund sent its young chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall, to take part in the trial. The NAACP desperately needed money, and Marshall was convinced that the Lyons case could be a fundraising boon for both the state and national organizations. It was. The case went on to the US Supreme Court, and the NAACP raised much-needed money from the publicity.
Conviction is the story of Lyons v. Oklahoma, the oft-forgotten case that set Marshall and the NAACP on the path that led ultimately to victory in Brown v. Board of Education and the accompanying social revolution in the United States.
Denver Nicks is a contributor to Rolling Stone and National Geographic Traveler and a former staff writer for Time magazine. He is the author of Private: Bradley Manning, Wikileaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History and Hot Sauce Nation: America’s Burning Obsession.
John Nicks is an attorney in Tulsa, Oklahoma, specializing in oil and gas, personal injury, and civil rights law.
Ron Butler is a Los Angeles–based actor, Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator, and voice artist with over a hundred film and television credits. Most kids will recognize him from the three seasons he spent on Nickelodeon’s True Jackson, VP. He works regularly as a commercial and animation voice-over artist and has voiced a wide variety of audiobooks. He is a member of the Atlantic Theater Company and an Independent Filmmaker Project Award winner for his work in the HBO film Everyday People.
Reviews
“Conviction stamps the name of Willie D. Lyons indelibly on the social conscience.”
“This audiobook combines a superb performance with content so compelling that it becomes a must-listen. Narrator Ron Butler’s perfect delivery allows listeners to stay focused on Thurgood Marshall’s defense of Willie D. Lyons…Butler perfectly captures Lyons’s and Marshall’s personas and the impact this trial had on each man and the nation, pacing the delivery and using inflection to highlight a series of crucial events. This extraordinary audiobook has lessons that resonate as strongly now as they did eighty years ago. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
“By illuminating Thurgood Marshall’s earlier, leaner years, Conviction adds a much-needed dimension to the life of one of our more misunderstood civil rights heroes. The most pleasant surprise, however, is Denver and John Nicks’s well-rounded and engrossing portrayal of W. D. Lyons.”
“This book deserves a standing ovation. It…shine[s] a light on unforgivable transgressions as they explain how political pressure, intimidation, coercion, and torture can result in a forced confession and the imprisonment of an innocent man.”
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