Volume 43, Number 14 · September 19, 1996
An Attack in Atlanta
By Nicholas Lemann
The Temple Bombing
by Melissa Fay Greene
Addison-Wesley, 502 pp., $25.00
One Saturday night in October 1958, a large homemade bomb went off in the most prominent synagogue in Atlanta. It blew a hole in the wall, but nobody was inside, and there were no injuries. Though barely remembered today, the bombing created a national sensation; unlike the church burnings of the past few months, it looked like the work of organized conspirators.[1] Within just a few days, the Atlanta police had arrested six right-wing terrorists of a type familiar in the South then, and today familiar throughout the country. Two trials were held in quick succession, but in both cases the juries, all-white, all-male, and all-Christian, could not arrive at a guilty verdict. The bombing went unpunished.
Review, 4534 words
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