Ralph Langer

Personal Verdict: a Civil Rights Novel Ralph Langer

College freshman Jeff Martindale's life begins changing almost the instant he meets Rev. Isiah Booker, a former Temple University halfback now active in the nascent Civil Rights Movement. Jeff is from a nearly all-white, small northern Michigan town. Isiah's a Philadelphian, 12 years older and black. Their chance meeting at a casual party on the University of Michigan campus grows from a mutual interest in fly-fishing to full-fledged friendship blended with a mentoring relationship that gradually awakens Jeff to the staggering cruelties of the segregated South, nearly 100 years after the Civil War. Jeff and girlfriend, Susan Adams, volunteer for paper-shuffling duties at the Ann Arbor NAACP, but grow increasingly frustrated with minimal national civil rights progress, even after they're jailed for joining two Tennessee sit-ins. When unspeakable violence strikes, Jeff shockingly risks his life, his future and Susan's love to pursue what only he views as a morally greater cause.