"The 1968 burning of the Lazy B Stables in Charlotte, North Carolina, attracted little notice beyond the coverage in local media. By the mid-1970s, however, the fire had become the center of an arson case authorities brought against three Black civil rights activists. They became known as 'The Charlotte Three,' and their case garnered national and international attention. That interest included an array of federal and local law enforcement agents, an Assistant Attorney General who would later be a Watergate convict, several ...
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"The 1968 burning of the Lazy B Stables in Charlotte, North Carolina, attracted little notice beyond the coverage in local media. By the mid-1970s, however, the fire had become the center of an arson case authorities brought against three Black civil rights activists. They became known as 'The Charlotte Three,' and their case garnered national and international attention. That interest included an array of federal and local law enforcement agents, an Assistant Attorney General who would later be a Watergate convict, several investigative journalists- including one who later earned a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the case-numerous New Left and Black Power activists, and Amnesty International, which declared the defendants 'political prisoners.' Much of that attention stemmed from controversial actions by federal agents and the Department of Justice-especially payments made to convicts to testify against the 'Charlotte Three,' which prosecutors concealed during the trial. As Christopher Schutz suggests in his comprehensive history of the case, the trial and its aftermath challenged local civic leaders who had long cultivated the image of Charlotte as a progressive southern metropolis poised to become a magnet for Sunbelt economic growth. Those boosters carefully constructed that image based on corporate and government leadership, long isolating any African American leaders they deemed too zealous. The rising faction of local New Left and Black Power activists in the late 1960s and early 1970s threatened the stability city fathers sought to project of a placid, business-friendly, and racially moderate community. Managing the 'Charlotte Three' and their activist allies-and the unwelcome publicity surrounding the case- thus became a critical pivot point in the Queen City's post-World War Two trajectory. Schutz's history of the 'Charlotte Three' is the first comprehensive scholarly examination of the case and its outcome. It is also a story of the South's future, as the fate of the 'Charlotte Three'-all of whom were convicted and sent to prison-became emblematic of the decline of the African American Freedom Struggle and the causes it championed. 'Going to Hell to Get the Devil' is sure to be of widespread interest to scholars who study civil rights, prosecutorial misconduct, the 1960s and 1970s, and those interested in the history of Charlotte"
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