In 1947, James Hickman shot and killed the landlord he believed was responsible for a tragic fire that took the lives of four of his children on Chicago 's West Side. But a vibrant defense campaign, exposing the working poverty and racism that led to his crime, helped win Hickman 's freedom. With a true-crime writer 's eye for suspense and a historian 's depth of knowledge, Joe Allen unearths the compelling story of a campaign that stood up to Jim Crow well before the modern civil rights movement had even begun. As deteriorating housing conditions and an accelerating foreclosure crisis combine to form a hauntingly similar set of circumstances to those that led to the Hickman case, Allen 's book restores to prominence a previously unknown story with profound relevance today.