Sharon L. Davies, author of Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race and Religion in America, the non-fiction account of a 1921 murder in Birmingham, will speak at Samford University Thursday, Oct. 14. Free to the public, her talk will be at 12 noon in the moot court room of Robinson Hall law building.
Rising Road chronicles the murder of Catholic priest James Coyle by Methodist minister Edwin Stephenson and the subsequent trial, which involved future U.S. Supreme Court justice Hugo Black as part of the defense team. The account provides an in-depth examination of the consequences of prejudice in the Jim Crow era.
Davies teaches criminal law at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law. Her talk is sponsored by the Cordell Hull Speakers Forum series of Samford’s Cumberland School of Law and the Samford history department. A reception will follow her remarks.