This Week on History Happy Hour:  The story of what may be the single most savage episode in the long history of violence inflicted by white southerners on their Black neighbors. Author Earl Swift joins us to talk about his new book: Hell Put to Shame: The 1921 Murder Farm Massacre and the Horror of America’s Second Slavery. A mass murder, the unusual trial that followed, and the national debate on race relations it sparked.

Earl Swift is the author of the New York Times bestseller Chesapeake Requiem, which was named to ten best-of-the-year lists. His other books include Across the Airless Wilds, Auto Biography, The Big Roads, and Where They Lay. A former reporter for the Virginian-Pilot and a contributor to Outside and other publications, he is a fellow of Virginia Humanities at the University of Virginia. He lives in the Blue Ridge mountains west of Charlottesville.